There’s something profoundly different about stepping into a Well Woman Yoga class. Perhaps it’s the way the room feels – less about achievement, more about arrival. Or maybe it’s the gentle recognition that this practice honours exactly where you are, in this body, at this moment in your life.
At Birthlight, Françoise developed Well Woman Yoga around six core principles that create a practice designed specifically for female bodies and experiences. This isn’t yoga adapted from other traditions – it’s yoga that begins with understanding female anatomy, physiology, and the unique rhythms of women’s lives.
1. Nurture and Self-Nurture: Creating Space to Simply Be
In our busy lives, how often do we give ourselves permission to simply be? Not to do, not to achieve, just to exist in a state of gentle awareness?
Well Woman Yoga creates this precious space. Through practices that emphasise letting go and non-doing, we allow the body and mind to renew. This isn’t passive – it’s deeply restorative. Think of it as pressing pause on the relentless forward momentum of daily life, giving your nervous system permission to soften and reset. Gentle self awareness opens up our connection to our intuition and compassionate self-enquiry known as Svadhyaya.
This approach nourishes all five layers of our being – what yogic philosophy calls the koshas. From our physical body (annamaya kosha) to our energetic body (pranamaya kosha), mental body (manomaya kosha), wisdom body (vijnanamaya kosha), and ultimately our bliss body (anandamaya kosha), each layer is held and supported through nurturing practice.
2. Grounding: Your Foundation for Everything
Before we move, we ground. When we lose balance we re-ground. This fundamental principle runs through every aspect of Well Woman Yoga practice.
Whether you’re standing on your feet, sitting on your sit bones, or balancing on hands and knees, we always begin by finding our connection to the earth. This grounding helps to neutralise stress and creates a stable base for alignment and balanced, easeful movement. It’s not just a physical principle – when we’re grounded, everything shifts. Our breath deepens, our minds settle, and movement becomes more effortless rather than effortful.
3. Pelvic Awareness: Honouring Your Centre
The pelvis is home to our centre of gravity – a principle recognised across many Asian traditions. In yoga, this area relates to important energy centres and the seat of the creative life force (Shakti). The health of the pelvis and lumbosacral area is fundamental to female wellbeing, and in Well Woman Yoga, we recognise that all movement originates from this powerful centre.
Through gentle micromovements, we awaken awareness in the deeper muscles and fascia in and around the pelvis, including the pelvic floor. This isn’t about endless exercises or forcing strength. It’s about discovering the natural intelligence of this area, finding both strength and release, both stability and flow.
This pelvic awareness also directly supports the flow of apana vayu – the downward-moving energy current responsible for elimination, menstruation, and grounding. When apana vayu flows freely, we feel more stable, more rooted, and better able to release what no longer serves us.
4. Alignment Without Strain: Finding Your Zero Balance
It may sound revolutionary but proper alignment should feel easy.
We seek what’s called ‘Sthira Sukha Asanam’ – steadiness and ease in every position. Robert Svoboda states that this directly translates as “resolutely abide in a good space.”¹ (See link below for his eloquent article) This means finding a neutral position, a place of ‘zero balance’ where no strain is required to maintain the posture. When you find this sweet spot, something magical happens – your breath flows freely, your muscles can work optimally, and the practice becomes genuinely therapeutic.
We pay precise attention to transitions too, because life isn’t lived in static poses. This can also serve a therapeutic purpose for when we need extra support during hormonal fluctuations or recovery from illness or surgery. How we move from one position to another matters, both on the mat and in daily life. These mindful transitions support samana vayu, the balancing energy that integrates and harmonises all the other energy currents in the body.
5. The Breath-Movement Dance: Vinyasa for Deep Release
When movement synchronises with our breath, we can access the deeper layers of our being. In Well Woman Yoga, we practise relaxed stretching on the exhalation – sustained, gentle lengthening that reaches not just the superficial muscles but the fascia, the connective tissue that holds everything together.
We work on gradually, gently extending the exhalation, which naturally increases breathing capacity and activates the vagus nerve – your body’s built-in relaxation response. The vagus nerve is like an internal reset button, running from the brainstem down through the neck, chest, and abdomen. When we stimulate it through deep, relaxed breathing and gentle movement, we shift from the stressed “fight or flight” state into “rest and digest” mode. This vagal tone is crucial for releasing accumulated tension that might have been held in the body for years.
This breath practice nourishes all the vayus – the five energy currents that govern different aspects of our physical and mental functioning:
- Prana vayu (inward and upward movement) brings in fresh energy with each inhalation
- Apana vayu (downward movement) supports grounding and release with exhalation
- Samana vayu (digestive fire at the navel) helps us assimilate both nutrients and experiences
- Udana vayu (upward movement in throat and head) relates to expression and growth
- Vyana vayu (circulation throughout) distributes energy to every cell
When these currents flow harmoniously, we experience vitality on every level – physical, energetic, mental, and emotional.
6. Joy, Play and Pleasure: Reawakening the Song in Your Body
This might be the most important principle of all. Well Woman Yoga isn’t grim determination or pushing through discomfort. It includes elements that are genuinely fun, playful and joyful. It is not common to smile or laugh or yawn or sigh in most yoga classes but here they can serve to enliven the heart and signal to body and mind that in this space we can also connect in a shared practice circle with other women.
Many women arrive at these classes feeling depleted, depressed or just disappointed that their previous yoga practice is feeling off or just doesn’t fit them at this time. Modern life can be exhausting, and for women navigating hormonal changes, stress, or simply the accumulated weight of caring for others, the idea of pleasure can feel distant, almost forgotten.
Well Woman Yoga aims to reawaken the desire for pleasure – in both body and mind. Because when we move in ways that feel good, when we laugh, when we remember what joy feels like in our bodies, something fundamental shifts. We begin to access that most subtle layer of our being – the anandamaya kosha, the bliss body. We remember that we’re not just machines to be maintained, but living, feeling beings worthy of care and delight.
The Golden Thread: Relaxation
Running through all these principles is one essential element – relaxation. Not just the final resting pose, though that’s important too. We mean relaxation woven through the whole practice that spills off the mat and into daily life!
Many of us have patterns of holding in our body that we’re barely aware of. The residues of injury, repetitive habits and patterns of protection that our body and mind used to try to keep us safe that may no longer be needed. Any bracing or gripping, anywhere in the body, can be invited to dissolve through the therapeutic benefits of yoga. So we create multiple pathways to relaxation: a supportive atmosphere, ease of movement, relaxed stretches, ways to access free and deep breathing, instant relaxation practices, and time for deeper restoration.
Together, these create what we call ‘the space to be’ – a space of non-doing that allows you to renew and regenerate. This deep relaxation allows the pranamaya kosha – the energetic body – to rebalance and restore, supporting the free flow of prana throughout the system.
A Practice That Meets You Where You Are
Well Woman Yoga recognises that women’s bodies are not smaller versions of men’s bodies. Our anatomy, our hormonal rhythms, our experiences are unique. This practice honours common themes but in your own uniqueness at every level.
For Every Stage and Transition
Women’s lives are marked by profound transitions – menstruation, pregnancy, postpartum, perimenopause, menopause, and beyond. Each of these passages brings its own challenges and a potential gateway to deeper wisdom. Well Woman Yoga provides support through all these transitions, helping you navigate hormonal shifts, physical changes, and the emotional landscapes that accompany them.
Maybe your usual yoga practice feels off or the activity that makes you tick just isn’t doing it for you right now. This may be an invitation to practice yoga differently, even alongside your usual practice or to dive into something offering a different perspective.
Maybe you want to nourish your fertility, better honour your menstrual cycle or have more support traversing perimenopause or even to prepare for it.
Perhaps you’re recovering from illness or surgery, needing a practice that rebuilds strength gently whilst honouring your body’s need for time and space to heal. Or maybe you’re juggling the demands of caring for children whilst also supporting elderly parents – that sandwich generation experience that leaves little time or energy for yourself.
Many women come to Well Woman Yoga seeking respite from demanding careers, where the pressure to perform, to be always “on”, has left them disconnected from their bodies and depleted on every level. Sometimes they have had a health scare or life event that nudges them to reappraise. This practice offers a space to step out of achieving mode and into being mode, to tend to the wellspring of their vitality.
Honouring the Whole You
Well Woman Yoga aims to offer a truly holistic approach to wellbeing. We’re not just stretching muscles or building strength (though we do that too). We’re nourishing every layer of our being, from the dense physical body to the subtle realms of energy, mind, wisdom, and bliss.
Whether you’re navigating a major life transition, recovering your strength after illness, carving out essential time for yourself amidst caring responsibilities, seeking balance in a high-pressure career, dealing with pelvic health issues, or simply wanting a yoga practice that feels right for your body, Well Woman Yoga offers a welcoming space where all of you – body, breath, mind, and spirit – can be held, honoured, and restored.
Learn to Teach Well Woman Yoga
For yoga teachers who feel called to this work, our Birthlight training in Well Woman Yoga with electives in Yoga for a Holistic Menopause or Yoga for Fertility offers comprehensive preparation to guide others in this transformative practice. You’ll learn not just the what and how, but the why – the deep understanding of female anatomy and physiology, along with the subtle body wisdom of the koshas and vayus, that makes this practice so effective. We also interweave insights from the wisdom of Ayurveda, Yoga’s sister science.
Ready to experience Well Woman Yoga for yourself, or to bring this practice to others? Explore our classes and teacher training opportunities at Birthlight.
Take a look on our Directory to find a Well Woman class near you or online: https://birthlight.com/directory/
If you’re interested in bringing these principles to your teaching, we’d love to welcome you into our training community, let us know you’re interested: https://birthlight.com/contact/
¹ Svoboda, Robert. “Sthira and Sukha: Steadiness and Ease.” Yoga International. https://yogainternational.com/article/view/sthira-and-sukha-steadiness-and-ease/