Yoga for Wāhine during the Menopause Transition: A Path to Balance and Renewal

Menopause - Ruahinetanga is not an ending, but a powerful transition — a time of deep wisdom, reflection, and renewal. For many of us, this season of life can bring both challenges and opportunities.

In Chinese medicine it is referred to as The Second Spring , not an ending but a new beginning. It is the time to no longer use our energy to give birth to children, but give birth to ourselves.

Hot flushes, sleep disturbances, mood shifts, and changes in energy are common, but so too are insights, clarity, and the chance to reconnect with our bodies in a new and more compassionate way.

Yoga offers gentle yet profound support for wāhine in menopause. It’s more than stretching or exercise — it’s a whole-body practice that nurtures the nervous system, helps to balance hormones, and helps us meet this stage of life with grace and ease.

🌿 Benefits of Yoga During Menopause

 • Regulates the N...

Menopause- Ruahinetanga, and peri - menopause- are a time of transition.

Sometraverse this transition smoothly, and others not so much. If you are the later it is important to remember that you are not alone, and although your practice may change, it may not be necessary to give up completely.

If you're feeling tempted to give up yoga during perimenopause or post menopause, please remember there is a practice for you.

Through my own experience I have found many ways that yoga helped, and it can help you too.

Firstly we may need to be more mindful about what, how and why we practice.

For example Slow, mindful yoga helps to reset your nervous system, and can decrease cortisol, and inflammation. 

Yoga helps us to move our bodies and keep our joints and bones healthy and strong too. 

The postures can offer a mix of movement- for joints and tendons, flexibility, and also strengthening poses such as warrior, goddess pose, plank and so on. Poses help us to maintain c...

The feminine life force energy is considered the creative force in yoga philosophy, the energy that brings all things into physical form.

This energy is radiant and powerful, it is active and creative as well as receptive and nurturing. 

However, I wasn't told this over two decades agony when I first started my yoga journey. I  learnt my own way of what felt right in the yoga space,  and what didn't after many years of practice and experiencing different teachers. 

Although most participants in yoga were women, many of the classes were strong physical classes, that felt quite competitive and performative at times.

It often seemed that we needed to be more, do more, be more flexible, and stay longer and longer in strengthening poses. 

It just didn't feel right to practice in the way I was being told to, so instead I decided to listen within, to what felt right to me. 

Through experimentation and observation, I came up with the way to practice that resonated with m...