A child doing a jigsaw, particularly at Christmas, was a tradition. And every year my mum would buy the latest Christmas jigsaw and we would do that new one and then probably some of the old ones as well.

But as an adult, I just didn't get into doing them. Every so often I'd do a jigsaw, but it was always an issue, like where you put it. If you're going to use a table, you can't use it for anything else while you're doing it. So I didn't get back into doing it.

But for some reason this year, I just had an urge to do a jigsaw. So we found a random jigsaw we had, again, a Christmas one. I think it was January or February time, so it didn't really work being a Christmas one. But I did it anyway, because I just fancied doing a jigsaw.

And I really enjoyed it.

It really hurt my back. So I do get a bad back anyway, and certain things do aggravate it. So leaning over a jigsaw wasn't ideal. But I really enjoyed doing the jigsaw, but it's like weighing up—is it worth the pain?

So I kind of again put it to one side.

But then for my birthday a few weeks later, my husband bought me like a proper thing to do the jigsaw on. So it's like an easel, so it tips upwards. So I had a good setup there, and I could have my office chair and this easel and I could do my jigsaws without any pain.

And for some reason, I've now really got hooked on doing these jigsaws.

And it's just something at the end of the day I really look forward to—sitting down and doing some jigsaw. Now I've gone to the charity shop and bought up quite a lot of their old ones. There's no point buying a new one, but I've bought loads of them to do and I've got a big pile next to me.

But I seem to get through quite a few now.

But it's become part of my routine and something I really look forward to doing at the end of the day.

Now, the reason for this is because it's being mindful in the moment.

So sitting down, looking at the different pieces, sorting out the colours—the worst bit sorting out the edges at the beginning. Particularly I had one that was like weird shapes and sizes, so there were many pieces that looked like edge pieces that actually weren't.

But it's just being mindful in that moment.

It's like blocking out all other distractions, being fully in that moment. And when you find two pieces that fit together, particularly if you've been looking for pieces for a long time, it's like, yeah, I found them—with that sense of achievement.

And when you finish the jigsaw, just like admiring your work that you've been putting in for however many hours.

I did buy one from the charity shop and it did have a piece missing, which was very frustrating—the fact that you've done all of this and there's one piece not quite there.

But generally it's like a real achievement.

But it's like—why is something so simple so effective in just taking you away from modern life?

We spend so much time on our phones, on screens, watching telly, thinking about things, planning what we're going to do, going to work, coming home, watching telly.

We don't take much time to switch off.

And this can lead to what we call chronic stress.

Now, stress isn't a bad thing in terms of—it kept us safe. In the caveman days, we had our fight or flight response, which kept us safe. If we went out hunting and we saw a saber-toothed tiger, we would run away.

Then our stress hormones would increase. This would get our heart pumping, it would get our lungs working harder, all of our muscles would become prepared and tighten up, ready to run away—or we would freeze.

But it was a short-lived thing.

Once the danger had gone, then the body would come back down to our resting state.

However, in modern life, we rarely bring ourselves back down to that resting state.

It is all of these things that are causing us stress throughout the day. It might be work, it might be teenage children like myself, it might be aging parents.

There are so many demands on our lives.

And these demands, and being in chronic stress, can really affect us—not just mentally, but physically.

So if you are perimenopausal or postmenopausal, then if we have a lot of stress, that increases our stress hormones.

As we go through perimenopause and hit menopause, then our ovaries start to reduce how much estrogen, progesterone and testosterone that we make.

If you've had a hysterectomy and had them removed, they obviously are not working—they're not there at all.

But what happens is our adrenal glands take over some of that production. But our adrenal glands also make our stress hormones.

And we have the same building blocks that will go to make a lot of different hormones.

So if those building blocks are being dragged towards making some of the stress hormones, we've got less availability for them to go on to make our sex hormones.

This then can affect our hormone balance and cause our menopause symptoms to be worse.

So can a jigsaw really fix this?

Well, it could be a part of it.

So if we have this cortisol and we have all this stress, then it can cause us to have more symptoms such as brain fog, it can affect our sleep, it can cause problems with our blood sugar levels, so we can have our energy dips throughout the day.

So we need to find some way to bring our body back down to that resting state so that we don't have this increase in our stress hormones.

Now, it might not just be a jigsaw, but that is what I found at the minute to really help reduce my stress—to be mindful in the moment, to look forward to having those times away from doing anything else, just to focus on that one thing.

Now, if you have listened to my previous podcast about the SENSSE method, which is the method that I have created to have a holistic management of menopause—if you haven't, go back and listen to it—but our stress management is one of the key parts.

Now, it doesn't have to be jigsaws, but you need to find something that you can do on a regular basis, hopefully that you look forward to doing, because then you're more likely to do that.

It means that you're in the moment.

Any other distractions are kind of away from you.

So it could be jigsaw, it could be something like colouring.

You can get adult colouring books. I think I had a Harry Potter one one year and one with animals in. So I've tried that as well.

It's just then getting some nice colours. Like when you were a kid, we used to get really excited about getting colouring books and then getting some crayons with it or some pencils.

And then just like again, that achievement of—look, I've coloured in the lines. I've made a nice pretty picture out of it.

But again, it's bringing you back to that moment.

Deciding—what colour is going to go there?

And it doesn't really matter. It's not like it's going to go anywhere. Nobody else has to see it. It's just bringing yourself back to that moment.

It might be that you do some drawing and painting or some kind of art thing.

I got really into doing pastels for a while. I haven't done any art for a while, actually. I need to get back into doing it.

But it's just finding those things that you enjoy.

It's like my mum sits and does knitting or crochet for hours.

And she can do that when she does other things as well.

But again, it's just bringing yourself back into that moment.

And it's anything that brings you joy.

Anything that just calms the nervous system.

Because our nervous system as a whole can become really sensitive and it doesn't take much to push you over the edge.

So you could feel fine, you don't feel like you're stressed, but your body is telling you a different story.

Your sleep might be affected, you might have brain fog, you may have other menopausal symptoms that are affecting you day to day—but you don't feel stressed.

But you need to choose something.

So it doesn't have to be a long time.

It could be 10, 15 minutes just to calm down that nervous system.

It doesn't have to be a jigsaw, but it could be.

So what kind of thing could you do?

Are you a jigsaw person?

If you are:

• Do you like to do little ones like the 500 piece ones?
• Do you like to try and do the really massive ones that take you a long time?
• Do you like the ones that have the weird shapes in there?
• Or the standard pieces?

Is there something else that you would like to do that helps you switch off?

Is it colouring?
 Is it doing some art?

So I want you to set a task this week to think—what could you do new?

Or you can continue if you're doing something on a regular basis.

But choose one thing this week to give you a few mindful minutes.

It could be a jigsaw, it could be colouring—just something simple.

Doesn't take much effort that you could do on a regular basis.

But even just try one or two things this week.

Pick one or two things and make that your priority this week.

Take some time for yourself.
 Take a few mindful moments.

And then see how you feel if you're doing that on a regular basis.

I would love to hear about what you're going to do.

So do join me over on social media, on Instagram or Facebook. I'll put all the links in the show notes.

And do comment on the post to let me know what you're going to do this week.

So have a great week and make sure you include some mindful moments.

Take care and see you next time.