Your body changes. Your breathwork should too.

Most breathwork teaching ignores a fundamental truth about women's bodies: we're cyclical beings.

Our hormones shift throughout the month. Our energy rises and falls. Our nervous systems become more or less sensitive depending on where we are in our cycle.

Yet we're taught to do the same breathwork practice every single day, and then wonder why it doesn't always work.

The Problem with One-Size-Fits-All Breathwork

Male bodies don't experience the same hormonal fluctuations women do. Their energy is relatively stable throughout the month. For women, this consistency doesn't exist.

Week 1 of your cycle might feel completely different from Week 3. What restores you during menstruation might feel frustrating during ovulation. The calming practice that works in your follicular phase might not touch the anxiety of your luteal phase.

And if you're in perimenopause or post-menopause? The shifts are even more dramatic. Hot flushes, night sweats, mood swings, insomnia - your body is navigating a massive transition.

You need breathwork that acknowledges this. That works WITH your body's changes, not against them.

How Women's Bodies Are Different

1. Hormonal Cycles Affect Everything

Your menstrual cycle (or hormonal patterns if you're perimenopausal/post-menopausal) influences:

• How sensitive your nervous system is

• How much energy you have available

• How easily you're triggered by stress

• How well you sleep

• Whether you need stimulation or rest

The breathwork that energises you in week 2 might exhaust you in week 4.

This isn't failure. It's biology.

2. Women Are More Prone to Dysfunctional Breathing

Research shows women are more likely to:

• Breathe through their mouths (especially at night)

• Over-breathe chronically (taking in more air than needed)

• Breathe into their chests rather than their diaphragms

• Hold tension in their breathing muscles

This keeps your nervous system in a low-grade stress state, even when you're trying to rest.

Add hormonal fluctuations on top of dysfunctional breathing patterns, and you get: chronic exhaustion, anxiety, poor sleep, and the feeling that you can never truly relax.

3. The Nervous System-Hormone Connection

Your nervous system and your hormones are intimately connected.

When you're chronically stressed (which over-breathing signals), your body produces more cortisol. Elevated cortisol disrupts your other hormones—progesterone, estrogen, thyroid hormones.

This shows up as:

• Worse PMS

• More painful periods

• Irregular cycles

• More intense perimenopause symptoms

• Increased anxiety and mood swings

• Poor sleep

Your breath is the bridge between your nervous system and your hormones.

When you breathe functionally (through your nose, using your diaphragm, at the right pace), you signal safety to your nervous system. Cortisol decreases. Your hormones can find better balance.

What Cycle-Based Breathwork Looks Like

Instead of doing the same practice every day, you learn to match your breathwork to what your body actually needs.

During Menstruation (Days 1-5)

Your body needs: Deep rest and restoration
The breathwork: Extended exhale practices that activate your parasympathetic nervous system
Why it works: Your energy is naturally low. Fighting this exhausts you further. These practices help you actually REST, not just collapse.

During the Follicular Phase (Days 6-12)

Your body needs: Gentle building energy
The breathwork: Balanced, coherent breathing that creates sustainable energy
Why it works: Oestrogen is rising, your energy is returning. These practices help you build momentum without burning out.

During the Ovulatory Phase (Days 13-17)

Your body needs: To sustain without pushing
The breathwork: Natural breathing awareness practices
Why it works: You feel amazing, and might be tempted to overdo it. These practices help you maintain energy without depleting yourself.

During the Luteal Phase (Days 18-28)

Your body needs: Nervous system calming
The breathwork: Practices that quickly downregulate stress (like 4-7-8 breathing)
Why it works: Progesterone makes your nervous system more sensitive. Little things feel big. These practices give you immediate relief.

What About Perimenopause and Menopause?

If you're no longer cycling regularly, cycle-based breathwork still applies, you just track differently.

During perimenopause: Your hormones are fluctuating unpredictably. One day you might feel energised, the next completely depleted. Hot flushes, night sweats, and anxiety can appear without warning.

You learn to:

• Track your energy patterns (not just your period)

• Use breathwork to manage hot flushes in real-time

• Create nervous system resilience for the unpredictability

• Build practices that support sleep despite night sweats

During post-menopause: Your hormones have stabilised at a new baseline. But stress, energy, and sleep challenges may persist.

You learn to:

• Use breathwork for daily stress management

• Support your energy without relying on adrenaline

• Maintain nervous system balance through life transitions

• Continue to honour your body's need for rest

The principle remains the same: Your breathwork adapts to what your body needs right now, not what it needed yesterday or will need next week.

Why Functional Breathing Comes First

Before you can do any therapeutic breathwork effectively, you need to breathe functionally.

Most women I work with are:

• Breathing through their mouths

• Over-breathing (taking in more air than they need)

• Using their chest muscles instead of their diaphragm

This is the foundation everything else builds on.

We start by assessing your breathing patterns and correcting what's not working. Then we introduce cycle-based practices and nervous system tools.

You can't calm your nervous system with breathwork if your baseline breathing pattern is signaling stress 24/7.

What This Means for Specific Challenges

PMS and Mood Swings

When progesterone drops in your luteal phase, your nervous system becomes hypersensitive. Breathwork that downregulates your stress response (extended exhale, 4-7-8 breathing) can reduce irritability and emotional overwhelm within minutes.

Perimenopause Anxiety

Fluctuating oestrogen affects neurotransmitters like serotonin and GABA. Functional breathing, especially nasal breathing, activates your vagus nerve and naturally supports these calming neurotransmitters.

Hot Flushes

Specific breathing techniques can cool your body by activating your parasympathetic nervous system. This doesn't eliminate hot flashes, but it can reduce their intensity and help you recover faster.

Insomnia and Night Waking

Over-breathing keeps you in a state of physiological arousal, your body thinks there's a threat. Correcting your breathing patterns (especially at night) and using pre-sleep breathwork practices signals to your body that it's safe to rest.

Chronic Fatigue

When you're chronically over-breathing, you're actually getting LESS oxygen to your tissues (this is called the Bohr effect). Learning to breathe less efficiently means more oxygen delivery, more energy, less fatigue.

This Isn't About Perfection

You won't always match your breathwork perfectly to your cycle. You won't always remember which practice to use when.

That's fine.

The goal isn't to become a perfect cycle-tracker or breathwork practitioner. The goal is to develop body awareness, to notice what you actually need instead of pushing through and to have tools that work when you need them.

Some weeks you'll track diligently. Some weeks you won't.

Some days you'll practice for 15 minutes. Some days you'll do 30 seconds of nasal breathing while waiting for the kettle to boil.

It all counts.

The Shift

Women spend years being told to push through, ignore the signals, override what their bodies are asking for.

Breathwork for women is about the opposite.

It's about listening. Adapting. Honouring what's true for you right now, not what was true last week or what you think should be true.

Your breath is with you all the time. It's the most accessible tool you have for working WITH your body instead of against it.

Ready to Learn More?

1:1 Coaching: Work with me to assess your breathing patterns, track your cycle, and build a personalized breathwork practice. Learn more →

Group Course: Join my next live course to learn cycle-based breathwork with other women. Join the waitlist →