In many Indigenous and ancestral traditions, a woman who had moved through menopause was considered to have entered her most powerful years. Not diminished. Not in decline. Initiated.
The symptoms we now medicalize — the heat that wakes you at 3 a.m., the anxiety that has no clear source, the emotional intensity, the fog that settles over thoughts that used to come easy — were understood as the body moving through something significant. A threshold. An energetic reorganization that demanded to be honored, not managed away.
I think about that a lot when I'm working with a client.
We've traded that framework for a medical model that treats this transition primarily as a hormone deficiency problem. And hormones are absolutely part of the story. But if you've been following the conventional protocol and still don't feel like yourself — if something is still off in a way you can't quite name — that might be exactly why.
There is more happening here than a lab panel can measure.
What the Energy Body Is Actually Doing
The reproductive system doesn't only process hormones. It processes life — conception and loss, creative energy, relational history, the weight of everything you've carried and everything you've chosen not to put down yet.
In reiki and in biofield tradition, the lower chakras — the sacral center and the root — govern all of this. Reproductive function, yes, but also creative expression, emotional memory, the deep nervous system sense of safety and belonging.
When a woman moves into perimenopause, this entire energetic region begins a renegotiation. Energy that has been organized around reproductive cycles for decades — and everything those cycles carry — starts redistributing. The body is literally redirecting its resources toward something new.
That process is not always smooth. Unresolved emotional material surfaces. Long-held stress patterns intensify. The nervous system becomes more sensitive than it has ever been. Women describe it as internal pressure — like something is trying to move that hasn't found its path yet.
That description maps precisely onto what happens physiologically when the autonomic nervous system is dysregulated: elevated cortisol, disrupted sleep, heightened anxiety response, vasomotor instability. The energy body and the physical body are telling the same story. I find it useful to listen to both.
What the Research Shows
I want to walk through the research because I think women in this transition deserve more than anecdote. They deserve to know why this works.
A study published in the Journal of Evidence-Based Complementary & Alternative Medicine found that reiki produced measurable effects on autonomic nervous system function — significantly reducing anxiety and pain responses. For women in perimenopause, whose stress-response system is already in a heightened reactive state due to hormonal fluctuation, that finding has real weight. Cortisol amplifies hot flashes. It disrupts sleep architecture. It accelerates bone density loss. When you calm the autonomic system, you create downstream relief across multiple symptoms at once.
On sleep — research published in Research in Gerontological Nursing found statistically significant improvements in sleep quality following reiki treatment. I've seen this in my own work more times than I can count. Sleep during menopause is compromised from multiple directions simultaneously, and the effects compound quickly. Poor sleep sharpens every other symptom: the fog, the mood, the pain, the fatigue. Anything that genuinely shifts sleep quality shifts everything else too.
A 2025 randomized clinical trial from PubMed examined reiki's effect specifically on depression in postmenopausal women and found significant reductions compared to control groups. This matters because the emotional dimension of this transition — the grief, the disorientation, the identity-level questioning that comes when your body is changing faster than your sense of self can keep up — is real and documented. It is not imagined. And it responds to energy work.
The finding I return to most is a 2024 randomized controlled study published in ScienceDirect that looked at distance reiki specifically in menopausal women. Participants receiving distance reiki showed significant improvement in menopausal symptom scores compared to controls. This is the modality. The actual thing — remote sessions, energy work conducted across distance — studied in this specific population. The research supports what I witness regularly.
On Distance and What It Actually Offers
I work entirely at a distance. My clients are worldwide, and I am in Mérida, Mexico. That distance has never once been a factor in what happens during a session.
Energy work does not require physical proximity. The biofield is not contained by geography, and practitioners trained in distance healing work through intentional focus and established protocols that function regardless of where you are in the world.
What I've also noticed — and I'll say this plainly because I think it's worth saying — is that distance sessions can sometimes allow for a deeper release than in-person work. When you're lying in your own space, there's nobody to hold yourself together for. The part of you that performs okayness in front of other people gets to stand down. The body feels what it actually feels. What has been sitting at the edge of acceptable can finally move.
I've worked with clients carrying chronic knee pain, persistent migraines, anxiety that had settled in like a permanent resident, PMS symptoms that had defined their months for years. Watching something shift in a woman who had stopped expecting it to shift — that is why I do this work.
This Is Not Decline. This Is Initiation.
The traditions that understood menopause as a threshold were seeing something clearly. The intensity of this period is not random suffering. It is the body doing significant internal work — clearing, redistributing, reorganizing toward the next chapter.
The question is whether you're being supported through it, or left to endure it alone.
You deserve support that sees the whole of what's happening. Not just the hormones. Not just the symptoms in isolation. The full picture — physical, emotional, and energetic.
That is the work I do at Black Lion Botanicals.
Book Your Distance Reiki Session
If you're ready to bring intentional energy support to what you're moving through, sessions are available now. Entirely at a distance — you receive your healing in your own space, your own time, your own bed.
Whether you're in the early stages of perimenopause, deep in the middle of it, or on the other side trying to recalibrate — there is a session for where you are right now.
Book at blacklionbotanicals.com.
The body knows how to move through this. Sometimes it just needs the right support to find its way.
— Terry
Black Lion Botanicals
A Few Things Worth Knowing
I occasionally share products and tools that I believe offer genuine support for women in this season of life. These are affiliate partnerships, which means if you purchase through my links, I receive a small commission — at no additional cost to you. I only share what I'd recommend regardless.
Promeed makes 23mm silk pillowcases and a Health Rx bedding line designed to holistically support sleep health. Recognized by Good Housekeeping as "Best Value," their silk bedding is thermoregulating and gentle on skin — both of which matter during menopause in ways that don't get talked about enough.
Flikeze offers at-home skin tools including photon masks, red light therapy panels, a vibrating massage gun, and a neoneck device. As estrogen declines and the skin shifts, these are tools designed to support cellular regeneration and skin resilience from home.
Both are worth exploring if you're looking to support your body through this transition on multiple levels.
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