Our six-week Yoga & Menopause course is built around this very principle. It begins Thursday 2nd July and is included in your free 15-day trial of The Frog Project. Find out more here.

Your Wintering

In Traditional Chinese Medicine, menopause is Winter.

Not as a metaphor for decline, but as a description of what this season is genuinely for: stillness, introspection, deep restoration. The turning inward of energy that was once directed outward. The body going quiet in a way that, if we allow it, can be profoundly nourishing.

We live in a culture that is not very good at Winter. We are better at pushing through than at resting. Better at producing than at restoring. And so when the body begins to ask for something different, as it does quite insistently during menopause, many of us resist. We try to keep the same pace. We feel guilty for needing more sleep. We tell ourselves we should be able to manage more than we currently can.

The mantra at the heart of our Yoga & Menopause course, borrowed from the remarkable Petra Coveney, is simply this: Rest. Do Less. Reduce Stress.

Not because we are giving up. But because, as it turns out, rest during menopause is one of the most genuinely powerful things you can do for your body.

Why Rest Is Medicinal at This Stage

Here is the science, simplified: menopause is an inflammatory process. As oestrogen declines, the natural anti-inflammatory protection it offered the body is also reduced. The stress response becomes harder to regulate. The adrenal glands, which are managing cortisol and adrenaline and also contributing to oestrogen production after menopause, can become overloaded when we don't allow them to recover.

When the adrenals are stretched and the inflammatory load is high, every symptom of menopause can intensify. Hot flushes become more frequent. Anxiety rises. Sleep becomes more disrupted. Fatigue deepens. The whole system is working harder than it needs to.

The things that worsen inflammation are probably familiar: poor sleep, excess alcohol, a sedentary lifestyle, chronic stress. The things that reduce it are perhaps less celebrated than they should be: good sleep, nourishing food, movement, connection, time in nature, and deliberate, practised rest.

Reducing the stress load is not passive. It is an active, informed choice to support the body through a demanding transition. It is, in the truest sense, medicine.

What Radical Rest Actually Looks Like

Rest during menopause doesn't mean doing nothing, though sometimes it does mean that and it deserves to be allowed. More often, it means practising a quality of restoration that goes deeper than sleep.

Yoga Nidra for Deep Rest

Yoga has a name for this: Yoga Nidra, or yogic sleep. It is a guided practice in which the body enters deep rest while the mind remains gently aware. It is not quite sleep and not quite wakefulness, but something in between, and the research on Nidra is increasingly compelling. Even a 30-minute Yoga Nidra is thought to provide restoration equivalent to several hours of sleep, not least because it puts the nervous system into a genuine state of recovery that ordinary sleep doesn't always achieve.

If this sounds good to you, here's a nidra you can try later on today:

For anyone experiencing the sleep disruption that is so common during menopause, this is significant.

Child's Pose (and other Restorative Poses)

The other practice we come back to again and again, particularly during the menopause phase, is deeply supported Child's Pose. Not the active, forward-leaning Child's Pose of a vigorous class, but the fully held version: bolster beneath the body, a blanket over the top, forehead resting, every sense turned off from the outside world for a few minutes. It is, as I sometimes describe it in class, like shutting the curtains and snuggling in.

It sounds simple. That is the point. The nervous system doesn't need complexity. It needs permission.

This one is pure bliss:

Winter Is Not an Ending

The seasonal framework of Traditional Chinese Medicine reminds us that what follows Winter is not nothing. It is Spring. In the case of the menopause journey, it is specifically a Second Spring: a time described in TCM as one of creative energy, renewed clarity and new purpose. The energy that was once directed towards reproduction becomes available for something else. Something new.

But Spring cannot arrive without Winter. The rest of this season isn't an interruption to your life. It is preparation for the next part of it.

There is something radical about that, in the most literal sense of the word. In a culture that rewards constant productivity and treats rest as laziness, choosing to honour the Winter of your life is a genuinely countercultural act. It is also, the evidence suggests, one of the wisest things you can do.

What Yoga Offers

The yoga we practise during menopause is not about performance or pushing limits. It is Hatha for gentle strength and grounding, Yin for deep release in the connective tissue, and restorative yoga for nervous system recovery. Breathwork woven through every class. Journalling to develop awareness of your own patterns and needs. And the circle we create at the start of each session, because one of the things that reduces inflammation and supports wellbeing in this season is simply the experience of being in community with people who understand.

Sometimes the most radical thing you can do is stop for a moment. Close your eyes. Let yourself be held.

This is the invitation of Winter. This is what we practise together.

Join Us This July

Our six-week Yoga & Menopause course takes place over six live Thursday evenings beginning 2nd July, 7-8.30pm. The last thirty minutes of every class is dedicated to pure relaxation. Recordings are available the following day if you can't attend live.

The course is included in your free 15-day trial of The Frog Project, no card and no commitment required.

Start your free trial and join us this July

How are you currently finding rest?