How Yoga Can Help Balance Your Hormones
Exciting announcement: We’ve just launched six brand new flows with one of our master yoga trainers, Tammy Mittell, on the MBody app. Download on iOS today and get your flow on!
If yoga isn’t a part of your fitness routine right now, we highly encourage you to keep reading this post. Tammy shares how yoga can benefit your hormonal health, joint health, sleep, and moods — especially as you age and enter into perimenopause. She’s also sharing a few of her favorite routines that she’s launching with us, so check that out below!
When I was putting these yoga flows together, I did so with a woman’s body in mind and wanting to create routines that can grow with you as you age. Regardless of how old you are, it’s important to know about perimenopause. It can last for 10 or more years before you actually go through menopause, and there are so many symptoms associated with perimenopause that, if you don’t know about them, can really catch you by surprise.
Why it’s important to understand perimenopause
The language around perimenopause is important in raising awareness and respect for women and their different cycles, phases, and stages. If you’re approaching perimenopause or already in it, you may be in a time of great change and upheaval. Perimenopause is a time when you begin to break from your regular cycles, you’ll still have them, but they begin to become irregular due to erratic hormone fluctuations.
Those hormone fluctuations are accompanied by mood swings, changes in behavior, sleep, energy, appetite, and even your appearance. Just like every woman experiences their menstrual cycle differently, you’ll experience your perimenopause in a way that’s unique to you as well.
How yoga can reduce hormonal symptoms
What’s important to know is that you can take back some control and work to minimize the severity of your symptoms. Your workouts can play a big part in that, and yoga is one of my favorite ways to support your body at this time. Yoga poses tap into every area of the body — your joints, muscles, your breath, immune system, cardiovascular system, digestive system, and your endocrine system. By stimulating key parts of your endocrine — hormonal — system, you can help encourage balanced hormone levels.
What type of yoga is best for perimenopause
I’d absolutely recommend relaxation, breathwork, and grounding meditations to support mental and emotional health at this time. It’s true that your hormones can impact your concentration and memory, but you can also feel as if you’re going mad due to the lack of medical support and understanding around ‘perimenopause. Emotional health is hugely critical at this time.
Yoga nidra and gentle yoga routines also support the adrenal glands (kidneys) which can be under more stress. Your liver is also burdened with dealing with all the hormones and potentially increased inflammation in the body. Your movement should be fairly static to improve focus and stamina but not too fast-paced as heating or overstimulating can lead to hot flushes. That’s why yoga flows with a steady and mindful approach can help, especially if you’re feeling more symptomatic on certain days.
What type of yoga is best for post-menopausal women
After you’ve gone through menopause, you no longer have menstrual cycles and your estrogen levels aren’t fluctuating as much because they are markedly lower (though if you are on HRT, that would boost those estrogen levels).
Lower estrogen means less tone and strength in muscles, reduced bone density — leading to a higher risk of osteoporosis — and a greater risk of incontinence and prolapse because the pelvic floor is weaker. Brain function can also be impacted because the experience of menopause is a neuroendocrinological (brain and hormone) process. With all of that in mind, the main thing to consider for post-menopausal yoga is to keep working on building muscle mass, doing routines that keep the joints mobile, and putting just enough healthy stress on the bones to support bone density. Exercises for the eyes, poses that support balance, and practising focus and meditation is also really beneficial for brain health and mental clarity.
Tammy’s top 3 yoga flows on the MBody app
I love all of the flows we’ve built for MBody, but if I had to pick my top three, here’s what I’d recommend:
Honor Your Wisdom Yin Yoga: to cultivate inner focus and mental clarity
Beginner level; 20 minutes
This Yin yoga practice allows you to work deep into the connective tissues for healthy supple joints. Yin yoga is naturally calming, grounding and meditative — making it the perfect routine when you want (or need) a gentler session on your mat. This particular routine moves through 13 different poses that you hold for 1-2 minutes each to really soak up the benefits of each pose.
Free Your Spine: to maintain mobility and feel uplifted
Intermediate level; 20 minutes
A supple spine is key to a youthful body and mind. This is a rejuvenating yoga flow that works along the whole spine and will leave you feeling uplifted and energized. We’ll work through some chest opening poses, work through some sun salutations to wake up your body, and then tap into the four planes of movement.
Juicy Flow: to support strong muscles and bones and supple joints
Advanced level; 15 minutes
Coming soon to the MBody app! This is a short but spicy workout. I’ll take you through a warming flow that makes the joints supple and the muscles strong. We’ll go through some Jivamukti sun salutations, an invigorating standing flow, and a bit of core work to get your blood pumping.
We can’t wait to flow with you! If you try one of Tammy’s yoga flows, let us know what you think in the comments below.
