A Magical Midlife Dispatch From an Ultra Swank Beat-the-Bloat Class ✨

Faulkner, this ain't... but yoga, as we knew it, will never be the same! 😂

This week's newsletter is brought to you by our friends at XOjacqui - Power To The Pause! Protein + Supplements For Women At All Stages of Menopause.

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Fellow Empresses, How the hell are you?

This week has been a tough one, so we’re bringing you a bit of satire, coupled with a dash of mindfulness, imagination, and love for a few of our favorite things.

A recent dispatch from a magical, mystical menopausal beat-the-bloat class…

New York City. We open on a crowded room of 40 or so midlife Manhattan women, the odd celebrity sprinkled among us. All are desperately trying to hold their farts in while pretending it is simply one giant Kegel. It takes every ounce, every brain-fogged neuron of concentration, but we’re doing our utmost…

I am there with my girlfriend, who shall remain nameless forever and ever, but she knows who she is. We all know who she is because we have all regrettably been there before. We have all been her at one moment or another in life. Because, yes, right in the middle of our pristine, griege-toned, slightly spendy, but still strangely spiritually addictive yoga studio, in a class dedicated to Beating the Bloat of Perimenopause and Beyond (because excess gas is what is truly blocking your abundance chakra.) Right as our wraith of an instructor, who seems to glow like a white witch of the highest order (probably because she is), is speaking in a hushed tone:

“Less projection, more presence. Close your eyes. Gaze inside. Summon yourself to the deepest depths of your interior and intuit how your body feels as it takes in oxygen and releases carbon dioxide cyclically without thought. Be with your breath and experience the sensation of your aliveness..."

Suddenly, things become a little too alive and interior, and my girlfriend lets the biggest one rip ever. It is a fart so long and loud—just like an extended trumpet solo from the Newport Jazz Festival.

The instructor pauses.

My friend looks around, mortified—her eyes the size of saucers. But how on earth do you recover? How do you ever come back to the class with a straight face?

The answer is you don’t.

The entire group busts up laughing, collapsing in their poses, and our instructor breaks her pose, covers her face, and starts laughing like Bill Hader in the Stefan sketch from SNL.

Live footage of our instructor! Gaaaaaaagh!!!

We roll on our mats as she turns and pulls a packet from the cupboard and says, “OK, I sh*t you not. This happens almost every time I teach this class. I want to say in 7 out of 10 of my classes, this happens and so I present to you,” as she walks up to my friend who is laughing so hard she is now in tears, "THIS special prize, my dear,” and hands her a packet of De-Puff by XOjacqui - Power to the Pause.

And I lean over to take a gander. It is an anti-bloat smoothie boost powder, and I’m like, “Ooh, I want that!” 

And then suddenly, everyone was like, “Hey, can I fart for a prize too?” and “Do you mind if I toot for loot?” and “Should we light a candle, or will we explode the room?” Which prompted, “Oh my God, you are such an eight-year-old boy!” and the retort, “No, I’m actually a chemist.” Which prompted an awestruck “Really? That’s so badass!”

Followed by a chorus of Could we all have one? To which our instructor replied, yes, she had a case of samples and that we could all have one if we promised to try it before the next class.

With a unique blend of ACV, kelp, and cucumber, De-Puff is 100% organic, and vegan, with no added sugars, gluten, soy, nuts, or drama.

In a recent study published by Nature Metabolism in Harvard Health, scientists observed that older adults whose mix of gut microbes changed the most over time lived longer than those with less change in their gut microbiome. All this suggests we need to further explore how to support continually diversifying our gut microbiomes over a whole lifetime. De-Puff could be just one chapter in the life story of your gut.

There you have it. True confessions from the de-bloat meno yoga crew—live and unfiltered—but with a solution beyond twisting yourself into a pretzel and meditating your farts away. I went home and added it to my usual chocolate protein concoction, and I want to say, for once, that I was a person instead of a walking whoopie cushion. It was like: oh hey, my gut feels 34 again! How the hell did that happen??? Can it stay that way?

Another added benefit, if you have teenagers around the house, is a marked reduction of outright mockery. One of the worst symptoms of peri/menopause is that, overnight, you become Queen of all Fartlandia—Liz Lemon-style. They might as well give you a crown.

So, before your teenage daughter can dream up every possible scatological honorific to relay on TikTok—everything from the Baroness of Bloat to the Fairy of Flatulence to the Princess of Pooting to the Noxious Noble to the topper: Her Royal Heinous. You can nip these indignities in the bud with a little boost from De-Puff. It will not actually stop the mockery, but it will make it a little less true.

Yours in Grandeur & Deep Sh*t,

p.s. Even though this was a comedy piece, I can’t recommend The Class enough… I love that even the videos completely kick my *ss every single time and that there are so many variations of workouts. You can access a 14-day free trial here.

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