The Feng Shui Approach to Menopause That's Worked for Me

By Jane Langof, Feng Shui Concepts

Last week, the Daily Mail published a piece about how I've moved through menopause with surprisingly few symptoms. No HRT, no major upheaval, just a set of daily habits I've quietly built over the years. You can read the article here.

I was grateful for the chance to share part of my story. But I wanted to write my own version, in my own voice, with the thread that ties all of these habits together, which the article didn't have space for. There are also a couple of small things I forgot to mention while I was being interviewed.

Because all of it comes back to the same thing: energy.

Menopause as a turning point, not a crisis

For a lot of women, the lead-up to menopause feels like bracing for impact. We hear about the hot flushes, the sleep disruption, the mood changes, the weight that seems to settle in places it never did before. I expected a hard ride too.

It didn't unfold that way for me. My symptoms were mild. An occasional hot flush, slightly more fragile sleep, nothing that knocked me off course. And I do believe the way I'd been living for years set me up to move through this stage with more ease than I'd feared.

Why feng shui shapes how I live, not just how I design homes

People know me as a feng shui consultant, and they often imagine I spend my days rearranging furniture and hanging crystals. The truth is more interesting. Feng shui is fundamentally about energy: how it flows through a space, what supports it, and what blocks it. When I work with clients on their homes, I'm helping them design environments that hold them up rather than wear them down.

What I've come to realise as a practitioner since 2008 is that the same underlying principle, energy management, applies to a life, not just a home. Your morning is an environment. Your kitchen is an environment. Your inner dialogue is an environment. Your body is the most intimate environment of all.

The habits I've built aren't feng shui in the strict sense. Feng shui is a specific practice for physical spaces. But they come from the same place: I've designed my daily life to support the energy I want to have. That's it. Here's how it looks day to day.

1. A morning designed for calm, not chaos

I don't reach for my phone first thing. I start with simple oral care, a tongue scraper, a few minutes of oil pulling with coconut oil, while I listen to short affirmations I've recorded for myself. Trust. Abundance. Feeling supported.

It sounds small, but it shifts the tone of the day before the world has had a chance to weigh in. As I told the Daily Mail, "It just gets your mind into a more positive space."

Then I journal three things I'm grateful for. They're often unremarkable. That's the point. As we get older, it becomes easy to slip into negative thought patterns, and gratitude is one of the simplest ways to interrupt them.

Before I leave the house, I meditate for twenty minutes. I practise Vedic Meditation, which I learned from Tom Cronin and have done almost daily since. Of everything in this list, meditation might be the single habit that has done the most for my mindset.

One small addition I didn't get to mention in the Daily Mail piece: I take 5-10g of creatine each morning. Most people associate creatine with the gym, but there's a growing body of research on its benefits for women in midlife, particularly for brain health, focus and mood. For me, it's become non-negotiable.

2. I prepare so I don't have to decide

Decision fatigue is one of the quiet thieves of energy in midlife. Every small choice costs something. What to wear, what to eat, when to move.

So I remove the choices. The night before, when I'm folding laundry, I lay out my gym set together. My shoes sit by the door. My water bottle is filled. By morning, going to train is the easier option than not going.

This is the same principle that runs through feng shui: arrange the environment so the choice you want to make is the path of least resistance.

3. Strength over cardio

I used to be what I called a cardio bunny. Running, classes, anything to keep the heart rate up. It served me for a while, but in my late forties I realised it wasn't doing what I needed anymore.

I shifted to strength training two or three times a week. Squats, deadlifts, rows, hip thrusts. The change in how I feel has been profound. More energy, more stability, more capacity. I still run and walk and play netball, but strength training is the foundation now.

If I could give one piece of physical advice to a woman over forty, it would be this: lift things.

4. The salad that runs my week

This was the part of the Daily Mail piece that seemed to land with readers. I have a base salad I prep every few days, ready to go in the fridge: lettuce, baby spinach, cabbage, grated carrot and beetroot.

When it's lunchtime, I build on it. Cucumber, avocado, tomato, sauerkraut or kimchi, sometimes leftover roast veg. A simple dressing of miso, olive oil and vinegar. Protein on top, usually chicken I've cooked in advance, sometimes fish or eggs.

It's not about the recipe. It's about removing the moment of standing in the kitchen at 1pm, hungry and ungrounded, making a decision I'll regret by 3pm.

"There's no decision fatigue," I told the Daily Mail. "It's just there."

5. I'm intentional about what I let into my energy field

I think about energy literally. Not just emotional energy, but the energy that surrounds me. The people I spend time with, the conversations I let in, the accounts I follow, the experiences I say yes to.

Online, I'm careful about who I follow. I avoid accounts that trigger anxiety, and I gravitate toward people doing interesting things, ageing without apology, and lifting others up.

But the same filter applies in real life. The friends I make time for, the rooms I walk into, the obligations I take on. All of it gets considered. Not in a cold or transactional way; just with awareness.

Energy is finite. Be careful what you give yours to. The clutter we clear in feng shui isn't only physical. The same principle applies to what you let into your life.

6. An evening that prepares me for rest

Sleep is the thing that everything else either supports or undermines. I dim the lights early, wear blue light blocking glasses, and spend twenty minutes on a Shakti mat before bed. I use magnesium spray, I read, and I tape my mouth at night to encourage nasal breathing.

A second twenty-minute meditation in the late afternoon acts as a reset between work and evening, so I'm not carrying the day's noise into the night.

7. Small, consistent, doable

If any of this sounds like a lot, please hear me when I say I didn't start with all of it. I added one thing, then another, over years.

Women give so much of their energy to everyone else. We learn to call that being responsible. But in midlife, the cost of doing that without ever giving back to yourself starts to show up — in your sleep, your body, your mood, your sense of who you are.

The work isn't to do everything I do. The work is to start with one thing that makes the rest of your life feel a little easier.

Jane Langof, Feng Shui Master, Speaker, and Author of Feng Shui, A Homeowners' Guide to Abundance

An invitation: my Blue Mountains retreat, 24 to 26th July

If something in this piece has resonated with you, I'm running an intimate retreat at Lilianfels in the Blue Mountains on 24 July. It's a chance to step out of your usual life for a few days and into a slower, more intentional one.

Together we'll share nourishing meals, move through gentle yoga, spend time immersed in the extraordinary landscape, and work through guided exercises around rewriting your story and rediscovering who you are — not who you've been required to be for everyone else.

Numbers are deliberately kept small. If you'd like to know more, email me at jane@fengshuiconcepts.com.au and I'll send the details as they're finalised.

Want to start smaller?

If a retreat feels like too big a leap, my free guide Top 10 Feng Shui Tips is a gentle way in. It's a download you can read in ten minutes and start applying the same day. Get it here.

Find out more about how I can help or get in touch to learn more.

For advice and inspiration follow @fengshuiconcepts