Mindfulness
Twelve written practices for the moments that matter. Three breathwork timers you can use right now. A sleep toolkit for the 3 a.m. Wake-ups.
Every practice on this page is free to read and free to do. Most have a voice guide too, so you can close your eyes and be talked through it, two spoken guides a day without a membership. Use the nav below to jump straight to what you need.
Estrogen helps regulate cortisol and serotonin. When it falls, the nervous system gets jumpier, anxiety spikes, sleep fragments, hot flashes ride a feedback loop with stress. Daily practice doesn't fix hormones, but it changes the floor under everything else.
Start with one. Pick the moment it's hardest, the 3 a.m. Wake-up, the 4 p.m. Crash, the email that sets you off, and have a practice ready. That's the whole game.
Free for everyone, start today
Pick one. Do it for seven days before you decide it doesn't work for you.
If the timers below feel like hard work, it's usually this: the breath is going up into the neck instead of out into the ribs. Nothing to fix, just aim lower and wider.
Calm anxiety. Reset before bed. 4 counts in, hold, out, hold.
Inhale
4
Round 1 / 8
Let's do one round together. Sit however you are. Breathe in, two, three, four. Hold it, two, three, four. And out, two, three, four. Hold again, two, three, four. That's one. Nothing has to change yet. Breathe in, two, three, four. Hold, two, three, four. Out, two, three, four. Hold, two, three, four. Keep going on your own for a few more. Four rounds is enough.
Slowing the exhale shifts the nervous system out of fight-or-flight. Cheaper than coffee, faster than a walk.
Try this week: Use it before a meeting, a difficult message, or stepping out of the car. Four rounds is enough.
Dr Andrew Weil's wind-down. Long exhale flips you to rest mode.
Inhale
4
Round 1 / 6
This one is for the three a.m. wake-up. You don't have to fall asleep. You only have to breathe. Let your tongue rest behind your top teeth. Breathe in through your nose for four. Hold for seven. And out through your mouth, slowly, for eight. Again. In for four. Hold for seven. Out for eight. The long exhale is doing the work. Two more rounds, then let it go and stay lying down.
The long exhale activates the parasympathetic nervous system, the same branch that prepares you for sleep.
Try this week: Use it in bed as a wind-down, or at 3 a.m. When you can't get back. Repeat up to four cycles.
Mid-meltdown · one-minute reset
Rage and tears in perimenopause aren't a character flaw. They're a nervous system asking for a pause.
Try this week: Feet flat. Press them into the floor. Whisper: 'I'm here. This passes.' Sixty seconds.
Put both feet flat on the floor. Press them down, properly, like you're pushing the ground away. Feel the chair or the bed underneath you. Now say it, out loud if you can: I'm here. This passes. Say it again. I'm here. This passes. Nothing about this is a character flaw. It's a nervous system asking for a pause, and you just gave it one.
Somatics
Somatic practices start with sensation rather than thought. Useful on the days when talking yourself down does nothing and the rage, the shaking or the racing heart arrives first. Nothing here needs a mat or a class.
When the room feels too much
Let your eyes lead, head follows
20
Step 1 / 4
Let your eyes lead and your head follow. Slowly. Look to one side, and name something you can see, out loud. Keep turning. Name another. And another. Don't rush past anything. Now the other direction. Name what's there. Five things, that's all. If you sigh, or yawn, or your shoulders drop, that's the shift. You can stop there.
Slowly turning your head and naming five things you can see tells the brainstem the threat isn't here. It's the first move in most somatic work because it's the cheapest.
Try this week: Let your eyes lead, head follows. Name what you see out loud. Stop when you sigh or yawn, that's the shift.
After the surge passes
Soft knees, shake hands and forearms
60
Step 1 / 2
Stand up if you can. Soften your knees. Now let your hands and forearms shake, loose, silly, no technique required. Keep going. Let it travel up the arms if it wants to. This is finishing the loop that adrenaline started. Ten more seconds. And now stop. Stand completely still. Feel the buzz settling. Stay here a full minute if you can. That settling is the point, not the shaking.
Adrenaline that never gets discharged is what leaves you wired and flat at once. Deliberate shaking finishes the loop instead of parking it.
Try this week: Loose knees, let hands and forearms shake for sixty seconds. Then stand still and feel it settle for another sixty.
Racing heart, 3 a.m. or 3 p.m.
One hand on your chest, one on your belly
15
Step 1 / 3
One hand on your chest. One hand on your belly. Feel the weight and the warmth of your own hands. Now breathe so the exhale is longer than the inhale. In, and a longer way out. Again. Your heart isn't in danger. It's loud, and loud isn't the same as dangerous. Ten breaths like this. I'll leave you to it.
Pressure and warmth on the chest or belly give the nervous system a slower, steadier signal to track than your thoughts.
Try this week: One hand on your chest, one on your belly. Exhale longer than you inhale. Ten breaths, no counting beyond that.
If the surges are constant rather than occasional, the nervous system guide goes deeper, and trauma-informed care covers the therapies (Somatic Experiencing, EMDR, sensorimotor work) that do this with a person in the room. If the holding shows up in your bladder or pelvic floor, the voice-guided pelvic health practices use the same approach.
Small vaccaria seeds (or stainless beads) held against specific points on the outer ear with a sticker. You press them through the day to give your nervous system a soft cue to settle. Gentle, cheap, and unlike a supplement, you can stop in two seconds.
Things women here use them for
Evidence is small-trial and mixed; nobody's claiming a fix. Think of them as a tactile reminder to breathe, not a treatment. Skip if you have a metal allergy, broken skin, or a current ear infection. A registered acupuncturist can place them properly the first time.
Guided sessions
Each one is short enough to actually do, two to fifteen minutes. Filter by intent or duration. Tap the heart to save the ones that fit you; your shortlist stays on this device.
Your 7-day plan
Set three things below and we'll deal you one session a day from the library. Swap or re-build any time.
1. What do you want to work on?
2. How long have you got?
4 sessions match.
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For the moment a hot flash arrives. Read once. Then do it.
Between meetings, before a hard call, after a snap of rage.
When the thoughts are racing and you can't think straight.
Three lines, one hand on your chest. Surprisingly powerful.
This phase brings real losses. Name them so they can move.
Tara Brach's framework. Three minutes can defuse a whole afternoon.
Lie down. Move attention slowly from feet to crown.
When you've been awake more than twenty minutes. Get up. Read this.
For the days the body feels foreign. The classic, for a reason.
Builds the muscle of warmth. Especially towards yourself.
Before you reach for the phone. Thirty seconds, three breaths.
An evening practice, named for the morning of tomorrow.
For the moment it spikes. Body first, words later.
When the body needs to discharge before the mind can think.
When you can't leave the room and you don't want to swallow it.
Your practice
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Recent sessions
Free · weekly check-in
Four small questions. Your answers shape what next week's practice should look like: when to deepen, when to soften, when to switch the focus. Stays on this device.
Printable plans
Pick the plan that matches what's loudest this week. Print it for the fridge or save as PDF, the day-by-day shape is already done. If you've logged a check-in, we'll surface the most relevant plan first.
Filter by what you're feeling
anxiety
Seven days of small regulators. Box breathing twice daily, grounding for the spikes, RAIN for the afternoons that hijack you.
sleep
Wind-down hour, 4-7-8 before bed, body scan saved for the 3 a.m. Wake-up. Daylight in your eyes within 30 minutes of waking.
hot flashes
Practise the cooling breath while calm so it's faster when it counts. Coherent breathing before bed to soften reactivity.
grief
Self-compassion break in the morning, three good things at night, one session of naming what's lost on paper.
Pair this with
Sources
Including the places where the honest answer is “the evidence is thin”. See how we grade evidence.
Which mind-body approaches have trials behind them
3 sources
CBT and clinical hypnosis clear the evidence bar for symptoms. Breathwork and meditation are worth doing for other reasons, and we say which is which.
Cognitive behavioural therapy and clinical hypnosis are the non-hormone approaches with enough evidence to be recommended for vasomotor symptoms. Most supplements, and several popular practices, are not.
The single most useful document for separating 'has trials' from 'has marketing'.
Read the sourceA menopause-specific CBT programme (CBT-Meno) improved vasomotor, sleep, mood and sexual-concern outcomes versus waitlist in a randomised trial.
Mood, sleep and cognitive change through the transition are addressed as clinical entities with their own management pathways, not as personality problems.
Sleep, and what actually treats insomnia
2 sources
If sleep is the thing that broke, this is the pathway with the strongest evidence.
Cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) is the recommended first-line treatment for chronic insomnia in adults, ahead of medication.
Sleep disruption in the menopause transition is common, multifactorial (hot flashes, mood, apnea risk, circadian change) and not simply 'stress'.
A note on practice
