Coping Strategies - Yoga For Menopause Relief
Rebecca Prescott
Yoga 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
Rebecca writes on both yoga:
http://www.yogatohealth.com and menopause:
http://www.menopausetohealth.com at these information sites.
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