I Turn 48 This Year. Here's What Yoga Has Actually Done For Me During Perimenopause.

Nobody warned me it would start this early.

I was 46 when I had my first hot flash. I was teaching a class, standing at the front of the room mid-sentence, and a wave of heat moved through my body so fast I thought I'd come down with something. I finished the class, went home, and Googled it.

Perimenopause. The years before menopause when your hormones start their slow renegotiation. It can last anywhere from two to ten years. Mine, apparently, had begun.

I'm 47 now, 48 this year. I've practiced yoga for over a decade. I thought I understood my body. Perimenopause taught me I was just getting started.

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What nobody tells you

The hot flashes are the obvious one. But it's the other things that caught me off guard.

The sleep. I'd fall asleep fine and wake at 3am with my mind running like I'd had three espressos. Not anxious exactly. Just on. I'd lie there for an hour, sometimes two, before drifting back off. I'd wake exhausted.

The joints. My hips were suddenly stiff in the morning in a way they hadn't been at 35. My lower back complained more. Simple things felt creaky.

The mood changes. Not depression, more like a shorter fuse, a quicker shift from calm to overwhelmed. The nervous system felt less buffered somehow.

And underneath all of it, this strange grief. My body was changing in ways I hadn't chosen, on a timeline I couldn't control.

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What yoga didn't do

I want to be honest with you: yoga didn't fix any of this.

My hormones are still doing what they're doing. The hot flashes still come. Some mornings I'm still stiff. I still have nights where sleep doesn't come easily.

Anyone selling you a yoga programme that claims to "balance your hormones" is oversimplifying. Your endocrine system is not that responsive to a forward fold.

What yoga did do, what it continues to do, is change how I live inside this body during this season.

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What actually helped

The hot flashes

Cooling poses are real. I was sceptical at first, but there's something physiological happening in a long forward fold or an inversion that shifts the body's thermoregulation.

Legs Up the Wall became my most-used pose. Ten minutes, feet up, eyes closed. I started doing it in the afternoons when the heat would build, and it consistently brought me back down. I don't fully understand the mechanism. Something about the parasympathetic nervous system, blood flow, reduced core temperature. But it works often enough that I trust it.

Supported Forward Fold with a bolster or folded blanket under my forehead does something similar. The head below the heart, no effort required, just gravity and breath. Cooling in a way that's hard to explain until you've felt it.

I also started taking Alternate Nostril Breathing seriously. The alternating pattern between nostrils has a balancing, calming effect on the nervous system. It's one of the few pranayama techniques with a reasonable body of research behind it. I do it before bed and sometimes in the middle of a flash. It doesn't stop them, but it changes how I move through them.

The sleep

This is where yoga has helped me most.

Not the practice itself. I stopped doing vigorous evening sessions years ago. But a 15-minute restorative sequence before bed shifted my sleep in a way that surprised me.

Child's Pose. Supine Twist on each side. Happy Baby. Legs Up the Wall again. Savasana in bed.

It doesn't put me to sleep. What it does is signal to my nervous system that the day is over. That the threat is gone. That there's nothing left to solve tonight. The 3am wake-ups haven't disappeared, but they're shorter. I drop back faster. That's not nothing.

The joints and stiffness

Cat-Cow every morning. Not as a warm-up for a bigger practice, just five minutes on the floor before I do anything else. The spine waking up, the joints getting fluid moving through them. It sounds almost insultingly simple, and yet: it works.

Thread the Needle for the upper back and shoulders, another place I now hold tension I didn't used to. Bound Angle Pose for the hips.

What I've learned is that consistency matters enormously here. Five minutes daily does more than an hour once a week. The body needs the reminder, not the marathon.

The mood and nervous system

This is the hardest to explain and the most real.

A regular practice, even a short one, gives me a baseline. Something to return to. On hard days I know that if I get on the mat for ten minutes, I will feel marginally less overwhelmed when I stand back up. Not fixed. Just less overwhelmed.

Easy Seated Pose and three minutes of slow breathing, longer exhale than inhale, does something measurable to the nervous system. The vagus nerve responds to breath. You can literally downregulate your own stress response. That's not woo. That's physiology.

The grief

The grief I can't yoga away. But I can sit with it more easily.

There's something about a regular practice that builds what I can only describe as a tolerance for discomfort. You learn to be in an uncomfortable shape and breathe. You learn to stay. You learn that discomfort is not the same as danger.

That translates, imperfectly but really, to the emotional terrain of this life stage.

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What I'd tell someone just starting

Start with the cooling poses if hot flashes are your main thing. Legs Up the Wall is the one I'd start with: ten minutes, wall or sofa, every afternoon.

Start with the restorative sequence if sleep is your thing. The Yoga for Better Sleep sequence on this site is close to what I do.

Start with Cat-Cow every morning if it's the joints. Just that. Two minutes.

Don't try to do all of it at once. This is a season that requires patience, which is annoying when your body is doing things you didn't ask it to. But five consistent minutes will serve you better than a perfect practice you abandon after a week.

You don't have to feel like doing it. I often don't. I do it anyway, and I'm always glad.

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The collection

I put together a curated set of poses specifically for perimenopause: cooling shapes, restorative holds, gentle strength work for the pelvic floor and spine. It's what I actually practice, not what sounds good on paper.

Browse the Yoga for Perimenopause collection →

And if you're new to all of this, the 7-Day Beginner Path is a good place to start building a practice from scratch. No experience required.

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This is my personal experience. I'm a yoga teacher, not a doctor. If you're navigating perimenopause, please work with your GP or a menopause specialist alongside whatever you do on the mat. Yoga is a complement, not a replacement.