A student in her early fifties told me, quite matter-of-factly, that nobody had really warned her how much was about to change – not just the obvious things, but the quieter ones. The sleep that wouldn’t settle. The sudden, baffling tears in the car park. A short fuse she didn’t recognise as her own. “I just thought I’d feel like myself, only older,” she said. “Nobody mentioned I might feel like a different person for a while.”
I think a lot of women arrive at this stage with very little real preparation, despite how universal it is. We’ve had centuries of silence around menopause, followed by a recent flood of conversation that doesn’t always translate into anything genuinely useful. So, I want to talk about what yoga can actually offer here – not as a fix, but as a steady companion through a transition that’s entirely natural, even when it doesn’t feel that way.
Perimenopause:The Unsettled Stretch
The years leading up to menopause – perimenopause – tend to be the most hormonally turbulent part of the whole transition. Oestrogen and progesterone shift, sometimes quite unpredictably and the body’s stress-response system often becomes more reactive during this time. This is part of why so many women notice anxiety, disrupted sleep, or a shorter emotional fuse during these years, even when nothing in their actual life circumstances has changed.
This matters for how we practise. Adrenaline and cortisol – the body’s stress hormones – tend to run a little higher during perimenopause and a nervous system that’s already working harder doesn’t benefit much from a yoga practice that pushes it further. This is often when rest becomes more valuable than effort.
Restorative postures, longer holds and unhurried breathwork all help signal to the nervous system that it’s safe to stand down from high alert, even briefly. I’ve watched students arrive at class wound tight as a spring and leave noticeably softer – not because anything’s been solved, but because the body’s had a genuine chance to settle for an hour.
A regular practice during this stage of life isn’t about controlling the hormonal shifts happening underneath. It’s about giving yourself somewhere steady to stand while they happen.
Menopause: Meeting The Physical Changes Honestly
In the later stage, the hormonal swings tend to level out, but a different kind of change becomes more present. Reduced oestrogen affects bone density over time and many women notice shifts in pelvic floor strength, muscle tone and joint comfort. These are real, well-documented changes – not failures of the body, just part of what oestrogen does throughout a woman’s life.
This is where yoga’s physical strengthening work becomes genuinely valuable. Weight-bearing postures help support bone density. Building and maintaining muscle strength supports the joints around it. Balance work – something we rarely think to train deliberately – improves proprioception, which in plain terms means your body gets better at knowing where it is in space. That matters enormously for confidence and stability as the years go on.
None of this is about reversing anything or holding back the clock. It’s about meeting these changes with strength and attention, so that the body you’re moving through this stage in feels capable and well-supported, rather than something happening to you without your involvement.
What This Actually Looks Like in Practice
There’s no single “menopause sequence,” and I’d be wary of anyone who promises one. What tends to help, broadly, is a practice that holds both halves of this stage at once – strength work to support bone and muscle, alongside genuine rest to support a nervous system that’s working harder than it used to.
Some weeks call for more of one than the other. Learning to tell the difference and trusting yourself to choose accordingly, is itself part of the practice.
A Steadier Way Through
Menopause is one transition among many that life asks us to move through and like most of them, it isn’t something to be fixed or rushed past. Yoga won’t take the transition away. But it can offer a place to land in the middle of it – somewhere to build real strength, find genuine rest and meet the changes with a bit more steadiness, and hopefully, on the better days, a sense of humour about the whole unpredictable business.
If you’re navigating this stage and looking for a practice that meets you where you actually are, my course Finding Ease: A Yoga Approach to Stress, Rest and Resilience goes deeper into supporting the nervous system through exactly this kind of transition.
If you’re new to yoga and want to understand it a little better first, Yoga Basics is a good place to start.
If you’re ready to explore further, Practice and Poses is a good next step – or if you’d like to try a class, I teach in Bebington and Hooton. You’d be very welcome to join us.