Qigong for Perimenopause: What It Is and How to Get Started
A practical guide to qigong for perimenopause. Learn how this gentle Chinese practice can support energy, mood, and sleep during the hormonal transition.
What Qigong Is and How It Differs From Tai Chi
Qigong is an ancient Chinese practice involving coordinated movement, breath, and meditative intention, used to cultivate and balance what traditional Chinese medicine calls qi, the vital energy that flows through the body. The word itself means energy work or breath work, from qi (life energy) and gong (skill or practice). While tai chi is a martial art that incorporates qigong principles, qigong itself is purely a health and wellness practice, making it even more accessible to beginners. Movements in qigong are often simpler and more repetitive than tai chi forms, and many can be practised standing, seated, or even lying down. This makes it exceptionally suitable for perimenopausal women at any fitness level.
The Science Behind Qigong for Perimenopause
Research into qigong specifically for menopausal women is growing. Studies have found that regular qigong practice reduces self-reported hot flash severity, improves sleep quality, and lowers anxiety and depression scores. A systematic review published in Complementary Therapies in Medicine found that qigong produced significant improvements in menopausal symptoms across multiple outcomes compared to inactive controls. Like tai chi, the proposed mechanisms include regulation of the autonomic nervous system, reduction of cortisol levels, and improvements in heart rate variability, a marker of parasympathetic nervous system activity. The gentle weight-bearing movements also confer some benefit for bone density and muscle strength, which are important considerations as oestrogen declines.
Qigong for Hot Flashes and Hormonal Balance
In traditional Chinese medicine, perimenopause is understood as a decline in kidney yin energy, which leads to excess heat symptoms such as hot flashes, night sweats, and irritability. Qigong practices designed to nourish kidney yin involve slow, fluid, downward movements and deep breathing that is thought to cool and ground excess heat. From a biomedical perspective, the effect of qigong on the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, the central system regulating both stress hormones and reproductive hormones, may help moderate the erratic thermoregulatory signals that cause hot flashes. While qigong is not a substitute for hormone therapy when that is indicated, it may meaningfully reduce the frequency and intensity of vasomotor symptoms for many women.
Energy and Fatigue
Perimenopausal fatigue has multiple causes, including disrupted sleep, thyroid changes, anaemia, and the simple demand of managing fluctuating hormones. From a traditional perspective, qigong explicitly aims to increase and refine qi, cultivating more available energy. From a modern perspective, the combination of gentle movement, controlled breathing, and mental calm activates the parasympathetic nervous system and may improve mitochondrial efficiency. Many women who practise qigong regularly report that rather than depleting them as more intense exercise can during perimenopausal fatigue, a twenty-minute qigong session leaves them feeling energised and alert. This is one reason qigong is often the movement practice most sustainable for women dealing with significant fatigue.
Anxiety, Mood, and the Nervous System
The slow, repetitive, rhythmic nature of qigong is inherently calming. The movements are simple enough to do without significant mental effort once learned, which allows the mind to settle into a meditative state without requiring the kind of deliberate internal focus that formal sitting meditation demands. This makes qigong particularly accessible for women who struggle with traditional meditation because they cannot sit still or because a busy mind makes stillness feel impossible. Research on qigong consistently shows reductions in both trait anxiety (overall anxiety tendency) and state anxiety (anxiety in the moment). For perimenopausal women who describe feeling perpetually on edge, this gentle retraining of the nervous system toward calm can have a significant impact over weeks and months of regular practice.
Finding a Practice and Getting Started
There are many different styles and lineages of qigong, but beginners do not need to navigate these distinctions initially. A useful starting point is Eight Brocades, also known as Ba Duan Jin, a classic qigong set consisting of eight movements that cover the whole body and can be learned in one to two weeks. It is one of the most widely taught forms globally, with high-quality free instruction available on YouTube. Another accessible practice is Five Animal Play (Wu Qin Xi), which mimics the movements of animals and is known for its mood-lifting playfulness. Many yoga studios, community centres, and complementary health clinics offer qigong classes. Online classes are equally effective and remove the barrier of travel for women whose energy or symptoms make getting out of the house challenging.
Building a Sustainable Qigong Routine
Because qigong is gentle and non-depleting, it can be practised daily without the recovery demands of more intense exercise. Many practitioners find that twenty minutes in the morning sets a calmer, more grounded tone for the day, while an evening session helps the body and mind wind down before bed. Starting with just one style or set and practising it until it feels natural before adding more is more effective than trying to learn many different things at once. Tracking your symptoms with an app like PeriPlan over six to eight weeks gives you visible evidence of whether your qigong practice is correlating with changes in your anxiety, sleep quality, energy, or hot flash patterns. This concrete feedback is often the most powerful motivator for continuing a practice that might otherwise feel too subtle to persevere with.
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