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Coping Strategies - Yoga For Menopause Relief
from: Rebecca PrescottYoga is not a 'remedy' for menopause - not least because
menopause represents a stage of life, rather than an illness. A
woman's experience during menopause is completely individual,
and yoga is not specific like the drugs of modern medicine.
There is no one set series of postures that thus make up a
'remedy' for the symptoms of perimenopause.
Yoga is, instead, an adaptive discipline that can support the
body through the myriad of biological changes it is making.
Importantly, it can also support our minds and emotions, and
allow us to come to a perspective on the inner processes that
are happening. Many perimenopausal women have found both the
physical and less tangible benefits of yoga helpful at this time.
If you haven't done any yoga before, it would be best to go to a
class to learn. No DVD or book can quite replace watching a
teacher demonstrate a posture, taking you through the different
breathing practices, and offering insight into how your body is
coping with the poses. It also helps to have a practical
grounding like this if you're reading yoga books, where they
will present a number of different poses and variations.
Learning yoga first by practicing it in class, gives you the
experience to adapt what you read in books to your own needs.
There are some general points about asanas (poses), however.
Back bends can be great for improving one's mood and lifting
energy levels, and forward bends are good for anxiety and stress.
There are a huge number of forward and back bends in yoga
however! And different asanas require different preparatory
poses, and what are called counter postures. Counter postures
are an important follow-up to doing certain asanas. They can
help prevent injury, just as the preparatory postures do.
There is somewhat contradictory advice given to women going
through menopause who want to practice yoga. Many books
encourage gentle, nurturing poses - restorative poses. But some
female yoga teachers who used yoga for themselves when going
through menopause found that an over-reliance on restorative
postures made some menopausal symptoms worse. This included mood
swings and weight gain. They found that sometimes, more activity
was better.
Given that quite active physical exercise had been found to help
with menopause, this observation is no real surprise.
Ultimately, it depends on what is going on for each woman, and
this can vary over time anyway. If you're feeling really tired
all the time, restorative poses may be best for that period.
However, if you've got more energy, there are a number of other
asanas that can really help.
For example, inversion yoga poses can be great for the hormonal
systems of the body. Inversions include headstand, shoulder
stand, standing forward bends, and others. With inversion poses,
especially shoulder stand and headstand, it's important to do
the preparatory and counter postures. And if you have a
particularly tense neck, it may be better to do a standing
forward bend than downward dog (and certainly not shoulder stand
or headstand), as the angle of the shoulders, combined with the
weight on them, can cause tension in the neck.
Other good postures for menopause can be the standing postures -
including triangle pose, half moon, and the extended side angle
pose. These open up the front of the body, and the hips - which
can be an area of stiffness for many women anyway!
Whatever poses you incorporate into your daily life during
menopause, remember to be flexible. The needs of our bodies
change, areas of stiffness change, symptoms change. Learning to
respond to this, like the challenges that life can send our way,
is the best way to tailor a practice to suit your needs.
References: 1. Australian Yoga Life, Nov 2006 - Mar 2007 2. A
Mohan, Yoga For Body, Breath, and Mind
About the author:
Rebecca writes on both
information sites.
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