Why Menopause Feels Like an Identity Unravelling (and Awakening) – Always Coming Back to Kundalini Yoga

Menopause as a Quiet Inner Shifting

There often comes a moment in midlife that is difficult to name, yet impossible to ignore. It can feel like a quiet inner shifting, or sometimes like a complete internal upheaval, but either way there is a growing sense that something about the life you have been living no longer fits in the way it once did.

The roles you have carried, the identities you have grown into, and the expectations you have met for years can suddenly feel heavy, restrictive, or strangely empty. Many women describe this season as feeling lost, confused, or as if they are coming apart, but I have come to understand it as something else entirely. I see it as an identity unravelling that is inseparable from a profound awakening.

Menopause Is Not a Decline, It Is a Recalibration

Menopause is often framed culturally as a time of decline, as though our value, energy, creativity, and relevance slowly fade once we move beyond our younger years. Yet this narrative is deeply misleading and, in many ways, harmful. Not to mention downright offensive!!!

From a more holistic and yogic perspective, midlife and menopause is not a falling apart but a recalibration. It is a natural turning point where the psyche begins to prioritise authenticity over approval, inner truth over external validation, and meaning over momentum. What feels like disorientation is frequently the psyche reorganising itself around a deeper sense of self.

Why Identity Begins to Unravel

For many of us, the first signs of this shift appear through dissatisfaction that we cannot easily explain. I remember literallt feeling like I was losing my mind!! You might look at your life and on paper everything appears fine, and yet something inside feels restless, flat, or wrong. You may find yourself questioning choices you once felt certain about, or noticing that what used to motivate you no longer does. This is not ingratitude, and it is not failure. It is the beginning of an inner listening.

Hormonal changes during perimenopause and menopause often amplify this process, not only physically but emotionally and psychologically. At the same time, children grow more independent, careers plateau or lose meaning, relationships change (around 60% of divorces are intiated by women in their 40s, 50s & 60s) , and awareness of mortality becomes more present.

All of this creates space for deeper questions to surface. Who am I beneath my responsibilities? What actually matters to me now? What parts of myself have I set aside?

The Identities We Begin to Outgrow

This is why midlife can feel like an identity unravelling. The labels that once right, now feel a bt alien. The “good daughter,” the “reliable one,” the “strong one,” the “caretaker,” the “achiever,” or the “people pleaser” may no longer feel sustainable. These identities were never wrong. Many were formed in response to love, necessity, and survival. But they were never meant to be the totality of who you are.

Beneath the discomfort of this unravelling lies an awakening that is quieter and more subtle than popular culture suggests. Awakening is rarely a dramatic lightning-bolt moment. More often it is a gradual remembering, a slow return to parts of yourself that have been waiting patiently beneath layers of obligation and expectation.

Why Kundalini Yoga Becomes an Anchor in Midlife

In my own life, and in the lives of many women I work with, Kundalini Yoga has become a steady companion through this stage. I always come back to it because it works with the parts of me that create the most chaneg: in the nervous system, in the hormonal system, in the subconscious patterns, and in the energetic body. Rather than asking us to fix ourselves, Kundalini Yoga invites us into direct experience. Through breath, movement, mantra, and meditation, we begin to feel rather than fix, to sense rather than solve.

Supporting the Midlife Nervous System

One of the greatest gifts of Kundalini Yoga in menopause is the way it supports the nervous system. This season of life often brings increased sensitivity, to noise, to stress, to people’s energy, and to emotional undercurrents. Many women interpret this sensitivity as weakness, when in fact it is often a sign of growing awareness. A regulated nervous system allows us to be present with change without becoming overwhelmed by it. It gives us the capacity to sit with uncertainty and to listen inwardly without immediately trying to escape or override what we feel.

Awakening Happens Through the Body

Kundalini Yoga also works in a way that honours the body as an intelligent participant in the awakening process. Much of what is surfacing lives in the body as sensation, tension, fatigue, or emotional residue that words cannot fully capture. Through practice, the body is given a safe way to release what has been held for decades, and as this happens clarity tends to arise naturally, without force.

This clarity arrives as a gentle knowing. A sense of “I don’t want to live this way anymore,” paired with “I don’t yet know exactly what comes next.” Kundalini Yoga teaches us to trust this in-between space rather than rush to fill it.

You Are Not Losing Yourself

One of the most important reframes I offer women in midlife is this: you are not losing yourself. You are losing what is no longer aligned. You are shedding layers that were formed for earlier seasons of life. What remains is not diminished; it is distilled. Simpler. Truer. More spacious.

Menopause as a Sacred Becoming

Menopause, when supported consciously, becomes a sacred becoming rather than a crisis to be survived. It is an invitation to live from inner authority instead of external expectation. It is a call to inhabit your body, your intuition, and your wisdom more fully than ever before.

Each time I step onto the mat, I am reminded that I do not need to reinvent myself or strive to become someone better. I simply need to return. Return to breath. Return to sensation. Return to the quiet intelligence that has always been present beneath the noise. This is why I always come back to Kundalini Yoga. Not because it promises a perfect life, but because it continually guides me back to myself.

And in midlife, that return is everything.

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I am an Actress, Kundalini Teacher, Children’s Yoga Teacher and Mentor. I actively take Yoga into Schools to ensure our next generation know how to self regulate and live in peace.

As the founder of The Full Life Principle, I empower women everywhere to live a beautiful peaceful life based on their uniqueness and spiritual growth.

My passion is ensuring that you are able to practice your self-care and enjoy your spiritual journey. My You Tube Channel provides masses of guidance and classes.