Why Your Ashtanga Yoga Practice Feels Different Every Day - And Why That's Not a Problem

Why Your Ashtanga Yoga Practice Feels Different Every Day

How an Ashtanga Workshop Can Transform Your Practice Through Every Life Stage

Have you ever stepped onto the mat feeling completely different from the day before? Strong and open one week, heavy and inward the next. A posture that felt effortless on Tuesday somehow unreachable by Friday. You haven't changed your practice. You haven't done anything wrong. And yet something is different.

If you've practised Ashtanga Yoga for any length of time, you'll know this feeling well. And if you're a woman, there is something important worth knowing: This fluctuation is not a flaw in your practice. It is your body's intelligence at work.

You're not doing anything wrong. You're just not working with our own rhythm yet.

The Cycle as a Guide

The menstrual cycle moves through four distinct phases, each with its own hormonal environment and its own quality of energy. In Ayurveda, these phases map beautifully onto the doshas - the three fundamental qualities that govern all of nature and our physiology within it.

The follicular phase, as estrogen rises after menstruation, carries the building, nourishing quality of Kapha - grounded, stable, full of potential. This is naturally a time of growing energy, improving mood, and increasing capacity. Practice can build here.

As we approach ovulation, Pitta rises - the fire of transformation. Energy peaks, motivation is high, the body feels strong and open. This is the week most women feel most like themselves on the mat. It is also, interestingly, the week of greatest ligament laxity - meaning the openness we feel carries a quiet vulnerability worth respecting.

The luteal phase that follows sees a gradual rise of Vata - the quality of movement, air, sensitivity, and irregularity. Energy begins to draw inward. The nervous system becomes more sensitive. The body asks for more warmth, more nourishment, more gentleness. And in the days before menstruation, this Vata quality peaks - which is why so many women feel scattered, anxious, or simply exhausted in the premenstrual days.

Menstruation itself is governed by Apana Vata - the downward-moving energy of release and purification. Ayurveda understands this as the body doing significant work, even in stillness. The tradition of rest during menstruation, the ashtanga ladies' holiday, makes complete sense through this lens: The body is not failing. It is purifying.

When we understand this rhythm, how it moves through our practice and what we can do to support ourselves rather than push against it, everything changes. The days that feel harder, slower, more inward stop being obstacles and start being part of the practice. Not something to overcome, but something to honour.

The Vata Years - Perimenopause and Beyond

If the menstrual cycle brings monthly rhythms, the transition into perimenopause and menopause brings a longer, slower shift - one that deserves just as much attention and care.

In Ayurveda, perimenopause marks the beginning of the Vata life stage - a transition from the Pitta years of transformation, productivity, and fire toward something quieter, lighter, and in many ways deeper. This is not a diminishment. It is the beginning of a different kind of wisdom.

Physiologically, the hormonal changes of perimenopause are real and significant. Estrogen can fluctuate erratically before it declines. Connective tissue loses some of its elasticity. Recovery takes longer. The nervous system becomes more sensitive to stress. Sleep becomes lighter. Energy moves differently than it did at thirty-five.

For a dedicated Ashtanga practitioner, this can feel disorienting. The practice that felt sustainable for years suddenly requires more recovery. Postures that were accessible may feel different. The body is sending new signals.

But here is what Ayurveda offers that pure physiology cannot: A framework for understanding this not as loss, but as transition. The Vata life stage calls for less fire and more nourishment. Less daily intensity and more intelligent rhythm. Not a lesser practice but a more refined one.

In practical terms this might mean fewer vinyasas, more restorative postures, more or different pranayama, it does not mean your practice dies but it might mean letting the practice evolve - not because something has gone wrong, but because you have grown.

Self-Compassion as Practice

What strikes me most, in all of this, is how much unnecessary suffering comes simply from not knowing. From measuring a cyclical body against a linear standard. From pushing through phases that are asking for wisdom. From feeling like the practice is failing us when actually we have never really been given the tools to practise as women.

Knowledge changes this. Not as a set of rules to follow, but as a kind of permission - to trust the body's signals, to adapt intelligently, to let go of comparison and find the deep ease that comes from moving in harmony with your own rhythm.

Ashtanga is a profound practice. It becomes even more so when we bring our whole selves to it including the parts that are cyclical, hormonal and beautifully, intelligently female.

Join Me

On 21 March, I am holding a workshop for women in Ashtanga who want to explore exactly this: Their anatomy, their hormonal rhythms, and their life stage, through the lens of Ashtanga Yoga and Ayurveda.

This is not a physical practice session. It is a space to learn, reflect, and connect with with the wisdom of our own bodies. We will look at female anatomy and how it shapes our practice, the hormonal cycle and its four phases, the Vata life stage and how to honour it, and practical tools to carry into your daily practice.

You can join in person at the shala or online. A recording will be available for everyone who registers.

I would love to share this morning with you.

You can register here:

Join the Workshop