Yoga for Hormonal Balance: Practice for Being With the Tides and Cycles of Our Shifting, Transformational Selves

Yoga and Hormonal Balance

I will be 49 in a few weeks. I’m in perimenopause, in the prime of my life (so far), and I feel healthy and embodied. A great deal of this is, I believe, due to my yoga practice. But maybe not in the ways that might be most readily concluded.

While through my life, I have been lucky enough to harness the healing powers of yoga for myself, my students, and my clients, I don’t ascribe my health to a series of poses. I have used asana, pranayama, and meditation to deal with symptoms arising from the changes in my uterus- bearing body, from PMS, to pregnancy, to postnatal healing, and now the gradual changes in the way my hormonal dialogue is shifting. But the biggest gift my lifelong practice has given me is the ability to sense and honor the tides and cycles of hormonal change as the essence of what hormones are- messengers.

Hormones carry messages from your glands to your whole system. This process is ever-fluid and in motion. “Disruptions” can also be seen as messages. Yoga provides a way to create the space to “listen.”

While yoga can help to ease symptoms of hormonal imbalance or discomfort from hormonal shifts, it is also important to acknowledge that some of what happens in times that appear to make us “difficult” to ourselves and others is that the “cushioning” hormones (which may pave the way to lovers, possibly children, and caretaking those children or other family members) come off a bit, and what arises at points such as PMS, perimenopause, and often the postnatal period, are opportunities to see and hear more “bare truth.”

Part of that “bare truth” is that we are full people, not merely reproductive vessels. As the cushioning hormones ease off, first in smaller cycles and then in longer ones as we move towards menopause, we get introduced to our potential energy and how it might move us through the world in new ways. They allow us to peek through the veil of social expectation and conditioning and see the self that is still intact, beneath and beyond.

If we can learn to step away from self-judgement in these phases they can help us open to the opportunity for self-nurture, ease the stress that disrupts our systems, and bring us to new levels of balance where we can integrate new levels of strength and creativity.

And what is “balance”? So often, the word “balance” is used in connotation with and expectation of stasis, as though we can arrive at an “ideal” and stay there indefinitely. But the physiological process of balance shows us something different: Our whole neurological system interacting with muscles and bones and fascia to create shifts that “balance” us. Balance is an action, not a place. Inside us, with our hormones and our nervous systems, we can see the same process. So coming to a place of balance is ultimately not stasis or even stability, but the ability to be with the process of change as it occurs.

The most important aspect of using yoga for hormonal balance is self-nurture- not just for relaxation, which is undoubtedly helpful- but also to make room to hear the secret voices inside us. Stress is the great disruptor. Soothing and toning the adrenal glands will always help. It is important to understand that if you have ovaries and a uterus, they continue to produce hormones and remain in dialogue with your body even after menopause. If you do not have these organs, you can still consider the crucial energetic aspects in dialogue. Keeping the pelvis strong and healthy with lots of loving attention is the center of your physical balance; in addition, your adrenal glands take up a lot of the balancing act as your ovaries slow down. Many symptoms are minimized when the adrenal glands are healthy.

With the awareness that comes out of such a practice, as you learn to listen to your body’s cycles, you may notice more sensitivity to the phases of your body even as outward symptoms ease. As we age, the phases tend to become stronger and then far more subtle, as after menopause. But they are still there, feeding your life force- just as they are there for people born with testicles instead of ovaries, and for people in medical hormonal gender affirmation. Tapping into the body’s tides—the way the hormonal system continues to connect messages throughout your being—can allow you access deep vitality, creativity and sensuality throughout your life. With this access, we can also touch on the ways that a lifecycle is not just about ascending and decline but about the way the transformations in our physical selves allows us transformation in all aspects of our being.

Below, I have given a few restorative, “one pose” practices for addressing different body messages. Please note that while I do discuss aspects of the menstrual cycle and common menopausal experiences, the principles apply to all bodies.

All of these poses can be held from 2 to 20 minutes.

They can all be done alone or together.

Your body should feel fully supported and held- you are not stretching, but releasing.

The first phase of the menstrual cycle is menstruation, when the uterus sheds the lining it has built up for an egg to get cozy if it is fertilized. In this phase, estrogen and progesterone are at their lowest. This is a wonderful time to take the cues your body will often give you to rest and turn inward. Practice during menstruation focuses on Apana, the downward moving, gravity- connecting energy of the earth.

Another symptom that can signal lower estrogen levels are hot flashes, during perimenopause or in the postnatal period- although flashing can be more fluctuation that just low estrogen.

You also may use these principles to address joint achiness.

One pose that is wonderful for all of this is

Reclining Bound Angle (Supta Baddha Konasana):

The next phase acknowledged in yoga practice is the onset of the follicular phase, when hormone levels begin to rise. Post menstruation, once the bleeding stops, is a wonderful time to practice inversions.

Inversions are also wonderful for balancing symptoms related to sudden hormonal shifts: hot flashes, mood swings, insomnia. In many schools, inversions are cautioned against during menstruation, but can be used at all other phases to bring circulation and fresh oxygen to the pineal, pituitary, and thyroid glands.

One simple, wonderful inversion is

Viparita Karani, or “Inverted Lake” also known as “legs up the wall”:

In the active follicular phase through ovulation, estrogen continues to rise. Many will feel a rise in energy, and strength and elasticity in the body. However, some, if perhaps estrogen levels are dominant, will feel breast tenderness, and sometimes headaches and a rise in anxiety. This is a great time for active practice, if you are feeling well; if you are feeling called inward, stimulating the belly with the gentle pressure of a supported twist can help the body release excesses of estrogen, fluid, or waste. Gentle twists are also very effective for relieving joint stiffness, and relieving brain fog.

One such pose is Salamba Bharajavasana, Supported Twist:

Within hours of ovulation, the empty follicle excretes progesterone, which gradually rises. An imbalance can incite exhaustion, depression, anxiety, mood swings and pms symptoms such as cramping and headaches. In balance, you may nonetheless feel reflective and intuitive. Your body is preparing to nurture new life or to release it- but again, while you may experience this physiologically if you have ovaries, all people may experience this emotionally and energetically.

This phase extends into the premenstrual phase, when both estrogen and progesterone drop, and the body prepares to release.

Menopausal and post menopausally, you may feel this aspect of the hormones slowing. There may be more joint stiffness and tendency toward inflammation.

A pose to facilitate turning inward and creating a space inside for letting go is

Salamba Balasana, Supported Child’s pose:

(I like to use bolsters to support my torso)

If you are curious to learn more, please join me at Yoga Tree on August 17!

More info and a link to registration here:

https://www.yogatree.com/workshopsretreats.html