Playing Music During Perimenopause: Why It Helps More Than You Think
Discover how playing a musical instrument during perimenopause can ease anxiety, lift mood, sharpen focus, and give you a creative outlet that is entirely your own.
Music as Medicine in Midlife
There is something quietly powerful about sitting down with an instrument and losing yourself in sound. For women in perimenopause, that power goes beyond enjoyment. Playing music activates multiple areas of the brain simultaneously, which makes it one of the most complete mental workouts available. At a time when brain fog and low mood can feel relentless, that kind of full-brain engagement matters. Whether you played as a child and drifted away, or you are picking up an instrument for the very first time, perimenopause can be a surprisingly good moment to begin or return.
What the Research Tells Us
Studies consistently show that active music-making, as opposed to simply listening, reduces cortisol levels and lowers self-reported stress. It also stimulates dopamine release, which is the same reward chemical that declines during perimenopause as estrogen falls. For women experiencing mood swings, irritability, or a persistent low mood, regular music practice offers a reliable way to prompt the brain to produce those feel-good chemicals on its own. Memory and concentration also benefit. Learning chord progressions, reading notation, or remembering a melody all demand sustained attention, which is exactly the kind of cognitive exercise that can counteract the mental fogginess many women notice in their forties and fifties.
The Anxiety and Sleep Connection
Anxiety is one of the most reported symptoms in perimenopause, and it tends to spike in the evenings, feeding into poor sleep. A short music practice session in the late afternoon or early evening can act as a natural wind-down, lowering heart rate and signalling to the nervous system that it is safe to relax. Wind instruments and singing in particular require controlled breathing patterns, which directly activate the parasympathetic nervous system. Even thirty minutes of gentle guitar, piano, or ukulele playing before bed has been reported anecdotally by many women to help them settle more quickly and wake less often during the night.
Choosing an Instrument That Fits Your Life Now
The best instrument is one you will actually practise. If joint pain is a concern, the piano or keyboard is gentler on the fingers than many stringed instruments. The ukulele is soft-stringed, compact, and widely considered the most approachable instrument for adults learning from scratch. Singing costs nothing, requires no equipment, and can be done in the shower or car. If you played violin or clarinet as a teenager, picking it back up is easier than you might expect because muscle memory is remarkably durable. The key is to choose something that brings curiosity rather than pressure, and to let the learning process be the reward rather than performance.
Building a Practice That Does Not Add Stress
One of the biggest mistakes adult learners make is treating practice like homework. In perimenopause, when time and energy are already stretched, that approach will quickly kill motivation. Instead, keep sessions short and low-stakes. Ten minutes is genuinely enough to produce benefit if done consistently. Put your instrument somewhere visible so picking it up feels natural rather than like a task you have to remember. Online lessons, apps, and YouTube tutorials make learning from home easier than it has ever been, and many teachers now offer sessions specifically designed for adult beginners or returners.
Tracking Your Wellbeing as You Go
It can be easy to underestimate how much your mood, energy, and focus actually shift over a week or a month. Using an app like PeriPlan to log your symptoms alongside the days you practise can reveal useful patterns. You might notice that the days following a music session consistently show lower anxiety scores, or that your sleep ratings improve on evenings when you played. That kind of data is genuinely motivating and can also be useful to share with a GP or specialist if you are discussing symptom management options. Music is not a replacement for medical care, but as a daily practice, it is one of the most accessible tools available.
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