If you’ve been following along here (and THANK YOU if you are), you know I talk a lot about the Waymaker — that powerful, liminal woman navigating the hormonal shifts and identity earthquakes of midlife. Part of what I’ve been exploring — for myself and with the women I work with — is the question of how to utilize the outside (the body) in order to help when things feel chaotic on the inside (thoughts/emotions).

Because they do feel chaotic sometimes, don’t they? The body is changing. The emotional weather is unpredictable. And we’re often still expected to function at full capacity while all of this is quietly (or not so quietly) happening beneath the surface.

What I keep coming back to, personally, is the senses.

Not as a cure or a fix, but as a doorway.

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I notice it in small things — pausing to actually listen to the birds outside my window, or feeling the breeze on my face during a walk and letting that sensation land, rather than moving through it on autopilot. These little moments aren’t nothing. They’re actually a form of embodiment — a way of coming back into the body and into the present, which is something we can so easily drift away from when our nervous systems are running the show (and which can leave us feeling disconnected from ourself, others and our lives).

And here’s what I want to say before we go any further: nothing here needs to be done perfectly. (Whatever perfectly even means — and honestly, I think we can let that one go.) If you manage to take one conscious breath today, or notice the feeling of your feet on the ground for thirty seconds during your walk — that is a win. A real one. Claim it - I’m proud of you!

So what’s actually happening when we tune into the senses?

This is the part I find genuinely fascinating, because it’s not just a calming trick. It’s a literal brain state shift.

When you deliberately bring your attention to what you can see, hear, feel, smell, or taste, you’re essentially sending your nervous system a message: I’m here. I’m safe. Nothing urgent is happening right now. That message lands in the amygdala — your brain’s alarm system — and begins to quiet it down. Stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline start to ease. The metaphorical smoke alarm stops screaming and the need to ‘scan for danger’ gets quieter for many.

At the same time, the prefrontal cortex — the part of the brain responsible for clear thinking, perspective, and emotional regulation — comes back online. This is why people often say, after a grounding practice, “I can think again.” Because they actually can. Stress pulls us out of that rational, regulated part of ourselves. Sensory awareness pulls us back.

There’s also something beautiful happening in the body itself. The insula and sensory cortices — the parts of the brain that process physical sensation — activate when you tune inward. Instead of looping through anxious thoughts about yesterday or tomorrow, your brain shifts to the only question that matters in that moment: What is actually happening right now? That interruption of the rumination spiral is no small thing.

And if you tend toward the physical — touch, slow movement, the feeling of something warm in your hands — that’s activating your parasympathetic nervous system, the “rest and digest” state that is the opposite of fight-or-flight. Heart rate slows. Breath deepens. The muscles that have been quietly bracing start to let go.

A simple place to start

If you want a structured entry point, the classic 5-4-3-2-1 practice is a lovely one:

• 5 things you can see

• 4 things you can feel (texture, temperature, pressure)

• 3 things you can hear

• 2 things you can smell

• 1 thing you can taste

It sounds almost too simple. But what it’s doing is giving your overwhelmed brain a finite, grounded task — and finite and grounded is exactly what we need when everything feels like too much.

The real gift of this practice isn’t just that it calms you down in the moment. It’s that over time, your nervous system learns something new: I know how to find my way back. From overwhelm. From the spiral. From the feeling that you’ve lost yourself somewhere in the middle of this wild chapter.

You haven’t. You’re just learning a new way home. I hope you are also beginning to notice that you can choose a new pattern of response rather than react - and that, my friends, is a very powerful place to be. xo

This is what I’d call a practice snack — small, nourishing, no special equipment required. Just you, your senses, and a moment of willingness. Let me know how it goes! Are some senses easier to tap into than others? Please share, I’d love to start that conversation with you.

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Enjoy this short exercise, you maybe surprised at what you find xo.

My breasts have made a decision, and I have decided to respect it.

They began their lives quite high up — optimistic, proud, you might say. Ambitious. They had opinions about necklines. They arrived at parties before the rest of me did. In their heyday, they were marvels, requiring very little assistance, inspiring a frankly embarrassing amount of cultural attention, and generally behaving as though they owned the place.

They did not own the place. They were tenants, like the rest of us, and eventually the lease terms changed.

It happened gradually, the way most profound things do. A slow settling. A growing philosophical interest in the floor. I didn’t notice at first — I was busy living my life, raising children, building things, burning things down, rebuilding them better. And then one day I caught a glimpse in a mirror and thought: oh. They’re heading somewhere.

They are heading somewhere. I believe it is called retirement.

And why shouldn’t they? They have worked. They nourished two children. They absorbed years of of being squished and compressed, held up by underwire or withstood the cruelty of foam padding that was never required, the architectural ambitions of women’s fashion designers who I am convinced have never actually met a breast. They have been pushed up, pulled in, smoothed over, separated, enhanced, minimized, and — in the great contradiction of lingerie marketing — supported in ways that felt suspiciously a lot more like punishment. They have earned their leisure years. They have earned the right to settle into a good chair, close their eyes, and go wherever gravity suggests.

Society, of course, disagrees.

Society would like me to purchase a lifting serum. A firming cream. A revolutionary new bra engineered by someone who clearly has a background in aerospace. There are devices, apparently — contraptions involving silicone, medical-grade tape, and what I can only describe as hope in adhesive form — that promise to return everything to its original coordinates. There are exercises targeting muscles I did not know existed. There are surgical consultations available, should I wish to invest in myself, a phrase that never quite explains what the return on investment is supposed to look like.

I personally have never considered these options. I have held them in my mind the same way you hold a piece of junk mail before you put it directly in the recycling. Of course, that is my personal opinion and not meant as any judgement toward any other women with breasts heading for their own version of retirement.

The marketing reels that show up in my feeds want to tell me that my breasts are not acceptable this way. That somehow they have gone wrong and need to be fixed asap. They are not a before photo awaiting an after. They are simply further along in the journey, which — if I’m honest — is where I am too. Softer. Less interested in performing. More interested in comfort. Heading, with increasing enthusiasm toward whatever comes next. In many ways, I feel about them as I feel about my entire body in general - with some shame about how I’ve treated her over the years. Now I’ve come to a place of great reverence and a strong desire to offer her nothing but sweet words and softness.

I have decided not to fight my breasts direction of travel. I have decided that a good bra — one that works with gravity rather than staging a heroic resistance against it — is a perfectly noble garment (or none at all!). I have decided that my body’s ongoing autobiography is more interesting than any version of it that requires medical-grade tape to maintain.

They know where they’re going.

And I love them enough to let them enjoy the journey.

Maiden. Mother. Crone.

For centuries these three archetypes are how society has mapped the terrain of a woman’s life — the flowering, the bearing, the wisdom. But since entering what might be considered the ‘crone’ phase of life, I have to say it doesn’t quite fit, it doesn’t feel right. Not because the term crone conjures up images of a wicked old witch offering Snow White a crisp red apple to bite into (though it does for me!) but more because I would place myself more accurately in the ‘between’ space. A place of unknown territory that exists after Mother but before Crone.

I believe something has happened that wasn’t originally accounted for when the archetypes for ‘woman’ were first created.

We started living longer. Fuller. Louder. We moved through motherhood — biological or chosen or consciously declined — and arrived somewhere the cartographers had never quite named (and to be honest, probably had no idea existed). Not the ripening of the Maiden. Not the devoted tending of the Mother. Not yet the silver stillness of the Crone.

Somewhere else entirely.

Somewhere that hums and rattles and erupts in flames and rage and sadness once in awhile. Somewhere that wants more.

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She knows this place

She is somewhere in her fifties, perhaps her sixties. Her body has crossed a threshold — the hormonal tides have shifted, the monthly rhythm has stilled — and she is standing in a new landscape blinking in the unfamiliar light.

She is not diminished. She is not waiting.

She is still very much here, in spite of every ad campaign telling her that she must ‘fight’ aging rather than embrace it.

She is the woman who shows up at her grandchildren’s school play with tears in her eyes and fire in her chest. She is the one who wakes at 3 am — not from a hot flash but from an idea, vivid and urgent, that has been quietly assembling itself in the dark. She is the one who finds herself saying no to things she used to say yes to automatically, and yes to things she once thought were for someone else, someone braver, someone with more time.

She has dreams. Not the wispy kind that dissolve by morning. Real ones. Plans. Directions. A sense that something in her is just beginning to stretch its legs.

She is also, if she is honest, a little lost, as though her identity has shifted even though there is a familiar smile looking back at her from the mirror, she doesn’t ‘feel’ the same.

Not lost in the way of despair. Lost in the way of a woman who has walked out of a role that defined her for decades and is standing with an old map in hand, realising the map doesn’t show this road (google maps has YET to come by).

She feels the sweetness of life more acutely than ever. A good cup of coffee. The particular quality of late afternoon light. The sound of her own laughter. These things land differently now — more fully, more gratefully, as though a layer of noise has been removed and she can finally hear clearly.

And yet it may also feel like this is a nameless space.

I find myself here too. Its new and scary and feels a bit vulnerable. But it also holds a lot of power.

Introducing the Waymaker

She is the fourth archetype (that I have completely made up). The one with life’s wisdom and skill in a space where society is telling her its time to slow down, that she’s no longer useful.

I call her Waymaker for a reason- she is not finding her way, she is making her way. She is actively engaged in her life and the direction she wants to take, even if she feels unsure, that’s ok, she can be more than one thing at the same time.

Not maiden, not mother, not crone — but the woman who stands between the tending and the wisdom, building and trusting the path as she walks it. The woman who has finished making way for everyone else and is only now, perhaps for the first time, making way for herself.

The name matters. Not because we need labels to live fully — but because naming something allows us to inhabit it without shame. When we have a word for where we are, we stop treating it as a waiting room. We stop apologising for not fitting neatly into what came before or what comes next. We stop carrying the identity of the person we used to be, and allow the whispers of who we really are, authentically, to be heard and cherished.

The Waymaker is not a lesser version of the Crone-to-come. She is not the fading tail of the Mother she once was. She is her own complete and sovereign season. And she is powerful.

How to tell if you are in your Waymaker era

She is post-threshold — her body has moved through the great hormonal passage of menopause (or at least for the most part), and she carries that crossing in her bones. She knows something now that she couldn’t have known before. Not wisdom in the abstract. Wisdom that arrived through the body, through the fire and the disruption and feeling lost in a life and body she felt she had known.

She is in full possession of her voice — or learning to be. For many women, this is the first time in their adult lives that the voice they speak in is recognisably their own. Not the voice of the good daughter or the capable mother. Not the voice that kept the peace or managed the room or spoke to please others. Her voice. And it surprises her (and others) sometimes, how clear it is.

She is still hungry — for experience, for connection, for meaning, for joy. The Waymaker does not accept that appetite diminishes with age. She has, if anything, developed a more refined and insistent sense of what nourishes her and what does not.

She is between — and she is learning to love that. The between is not emptiness. It is potential. She is writing herself into being, one step at a time, and the path she makes is entirely her own.

What the Waymaker needs

She needs to be seen — not as a problem to be solved or a phase to be moved through, but as a woman in the full complexity of her becoming. She needs to be sovereign.

She needs practices that meet her body where it is — not the body she had at thirty, not some idealised body that never existed, but this body, right now, with all its heat and wisdom and surprising capability.

She needs language that honours her experience — writing that says I see you there, in that unnamed space, and it is not a diminishment. It is a doorway.

She needs community. Other Waymakers. Women who understand the particular texture of this season — who can laugh at the 3 am ideas and the sudden tears at sunset and the fierce, unexpected joy of finally, finally knowing what you will and will not carry.

And she needs permission — to dream, to begin, to claim the hottest chapter of her life not as a metaphor but as a lived reality.

To the woman reading this

If you are here — in the unnamed place, in the between — I want you to know something.

You are not lost. You are not too late. You are not too much, or too little, or too anything.

You are a Waymaker, my sweet wonderful soul! And I’m so happy you are here!

And the way you are making? It has never been made before. It is entirely yours.

The old map didn’t show this road because this road didn’t exist until you started walking it.

Welcome to the hottest chapter yet.

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Yoga for Women on Fire is a space for Waymakers — where movement, somatic practice and honest writing meet the messy, magnificent work of reclaiming yourself. If this resonated, subscribe to walk this road together.

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You found this place. And I don’t think that was an accident.

Maybe you arrived here because something in you is shifting — quietly, insistently — and you’re not entirely sure what to do with that. Maybe you’ve been feeling the edges of a life that no longer quite fits, the way you feel the edges of a sweater you’ve outgrown. Maybe you’ve been carrying something for a very long time and your arms are finally, mercifully, beginning to ask why.

Or maybe you just liked the name.

Either way — I’m so happy to see you!

Yoga for Women on Fire is a Substack for women in the midst of becoming.

Specifically — women in the menopausal and post-menopausal season of life who are in the process of reclaiming something. Their body. Their voice. Their sense of who they actually are, underneath all the roles they’ve faithfully played.

Here you’ll find two things woven together:

Honest writing — essays, reflections and ideas that name the experience of this season plainly and without apology. The heat. The rage. The grief. The surprising, almost embarrassing joy. The identity that is shedding its old skin and the new one that is slowly, tenderly emerging.

Embodied practice — yoga therapy and somatic movement designed specifically for where you are right now. Not the yoga of perfect poses and 90-minute studios. Practical, accessible, deeply felt practice that meets your body with curiosity and kindness, and helps you come home to it.

These two things — writing and movement — belong together. Because reclaiming yourself is not only a mental exercise. It lives in the body. It needs to be breathed and moved and felt, not just thought.

Who I am

I’m Julie — J.P. Chapman in writing, Julie to my readers.

I’m a yoga therapist based in Nanaimo, BC, and I’ve spent years working with women at the intersection of the body and the self. I know this terrain — professionally and personally. I am a Waymaker too, standing in the same unnamed space between who I was and who I am becoming, making the path as I walk it.

I built this space because I kept meeting women who were having the same quiet crisis. Women who were vibrant, capable, full of dreams and ideas and longing — and who felt, somehow, that this season of life was supposed to be a dimming rather than a lit match.

I disagree. Fundamentally and joyfully.

I think this is the hottest chapter yet.

What you’ll find here

Every week I’ll bring you something — a piece of writing that sees you where you are, or a short somatic practical practice that you can do exactly as you are, right now, no mat or special clothing required.

Occasionally I’ll leave a little gift at your door — a surprise practice, a reflection, something that arrived in the night and felt too good not to share.

And as this community grows, I hope what you’ll find most of all is each other. Other women in this season. Other Waymakers. A sisterhood built not on who we used to be but on who we are becoming together.

Free subscribers receive regular posts and are warmly, genuinely welcomed.

Paid subscribers become part of the inner circle — full access to everything, the growing archive of practices and essays, and the community that is the beating heart of this whole endeavour who are deeply appreciated.

A word before you go

You may feel lost right now.

You may feel like the woman you were for the last few decades has quietly packed her bags, and the woman arriving to take her place hasn’t fully introduced herself yet.

That in-between place — I know it. And I want to tell you something about it.

You’re not lost. You’re just finally letting go of everything that was never yours to carry.

And that, it turns out, takes up a lot of room.

Welcome to the fire, my friend.

I’m so glad you’re here. If this resonates — subscribe, share with a woman who needs it, and come say hello in the comments. This place gets better the more of us are in it.

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