Before Hormone Therapy: How Women Balanced Their Hormones Naturally Through the Ages

Menopause as a Rite, Not a Diagnosis

Long before laboratories synthesized hormones and before the phrase “HRT” entered our vocabulary, women all over the world navigated the transitions of midlife through nature, rhythm, and ritual. Menopause was not a disease to be treated—it was a passage to be honored.

In traditional societies, when a woman stopped bleeding, she was said to have gathered her blood back into her body. Power returned inward. She became the elder, the healer, the oracle. Across continents, women used food, herbs, bodywork, and ceremony to support this shift. Their medicine was guided not by prescriptions but by the intelligence of the Earth.

Ancient Medicine and Feminine Renewal

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM)

The Chinese classics described menopause as Tian Gui returns to its source—the Heavenly Water flowing back inward. Rather than loss, this was seen as replenishment.

Women nourished Kidney Yin and Jing, the deep reserves of vitality, with black sesame, walnuts, bone broth, and seaweed. Herbs like Dong Quai, He Shou Wu, and Rehmannia restored inner balance, while acupuncture harmonized the Heart–Kidney connection and calmed the spirit. Gentle movement—Tai Chi, Qigong, and walking in nature—kept Qi flowing without depleting energy.

Ayurveda

In India, menopause was recognized as the Vata phase of life—airy, intuitive, and spiritual. The remedies were grounding and nourishing: sesame-oil abhyanga (self-massage), warm spiced milk, Shatavari and Ashwagandha tonics, meditation, and early bedtime. Women were encouraged to simplify and rest, listening to the new rhythm rising from within.

Western and Folk Traditions

European and American herbalists reached for plants like black cohosh, red clover, wild yam, and sage for hot flashes and mood balance. By the late 1800s, remedies such as Lydia Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound—a blend of tonics and roots—were popular “female regulators.” Healing was shared among women in kitchens and gardens; wisdom passed hand-to-hand, generation to generation.

Indigenous and Mayan Wisdom: Menopause as Sacred Power

Across Indigenous cultures, menopause was never considered an ending. It was the awakening of spiritual authority. The cessation of monthly bleeding did not signify the loss of fertility—it marked the moment when a woman’s creative energy could be directed inward, toward vision and medicine.

The Mayan View: The Blood as Life Force

Among the Maya of Central America, the menstrual blood was regarded as sacred life force—the monthly offering a woman gave to the Earth and the cosmos. When bleeding ceased, that power was not lost; it was kept within. Elders said that after menopause, a woman became “a vessel of light.” Her blood now nourished her inner fire, her healing gifts, and her connection to the unseen world.

Rather than being dismissed, postmenopausal women were sought for counsel. They became midwives, spiritual healers, and keepers of ceremony. In the community, they carried the memory of the people—the living libraries of wisdom.

You see this reflected in the Mayan calendar itself, where the energies of Ix (the Jaguar Priestess) and Ajmaq (the Forgiver) embody the intuitive sight, humility, and spiritual power of the Wise Woman.

Rituals of Renewal

During the transition, women were encouraged to rest, withdraw, and spend time near water—the rivers, the sea, or the steam of medicinal plants. Spiritual bathing was practiced to cleanse the emotional residue of earlier life phases. Herbs such as basil, rosemary, rue, and flor de muerto were steeped in water under the sun, then poured over the body while prayers were spoken.

These ceremonies supported not only physical cleansing but energetic rebirth. The woman was literally washing away her old identity to emerge renewed.

The Indigenous View of Hormone Balance

In Indigenous medicine systems, there was no concept of “hormone replacement.” The belief was that the body’s wisdom could always find its own balance when nourished with respect.

Women were guided to:

• Eat from the Earth—warm foods, local herbs, wild greens, and roots.

• Rest in darkness to reset their inner rhythms.

• Pray and breathe with the elements, especially water and fire, to restore harmony.

• Be seen by other women, because community recognition was part of healing.

Menopause was the time when a woman’s intuitive sight sharpened, her dreams deepened, and her words gained weight. In the eyes of the village, she was no longer cycling with the moon because she had become the moon.

Bridging Ancient and Modern Wisdom

In the lineage of Mayan healing taught by Don Elijio Panti and carried forward by Dr. Rosita Arvigo, this reverence for the feminine body continues. The womb is seen as the seat of the soul—a place where spirit and matter meet. When the physical cycles end, the spiritual womb awakens. The healer within the woman is born.

For the modern woman entering her Second Spring, remembering these teachings restores dignity to what medicine once pathologized. Menopause becomes initiation—a return to self, to the Earth, and to the divine feminine current that has always moved through us.

The Body as a Barometer of Balance

Before blood panels and pharmaceuticals, women read their own bodies—energy, sleep, skin, mood, digestion, intuition. When life felt too hot, they cooled it; when dry, they nourished it; when tired, they rested. Medicine was simple: teas, broths, baths, prayer, and community. No woman walked this path alone.

The Rise of HRT and the Rise of Cancer

In the 1940s, scientists isolated estrogen and launched a new era of hormone-replacement therapy. For decades, synthetic hormones were celebrated as the fountain of youth, prescribed to millions of women with the promise of restored vitality and beauty.

By the 1960s and 70s, HRT use had skyrocketed. Yet as its popularity rose, so too did the rates of hormone-dependent cancers—particularly breast, ovarian, and endometrial cancers. By the early 2000s, large-scale studies such as the Women’s Health Initiative revealed that certain forms of HRT significantly increased the risks of breast cancer, blood clots, heart disease, and stroke.

These findings forced a collective reevaluation. Women began asking why a natural transition had been medicalized, and whether the suppression of the body’s innate rhythms was creating new forms of disease.

From a holistic perspective, it became clear that what had been marketed as “balance” was, for many, creating deeper imbalance. When synthetic hormones replace rather than regulate, the endocrine system’s feedback loops weaken. The subtle intelligence of the body—the dialogue between hypothalamus, pituitary, ovaries, and adrenals—is disrupted.

In contrast, traditional approaches work with the body, not against it. Herbs like Dong Quai, Shatavari, and Black Cohosh modulate receptor sensitivity rather than override it. Nutritional therapy rebuilds precursors. Rest and emotional healing restore parasympathetic dominance. And sacred practices—spiritual bathing, breathwork, pelvic care—restore trust between body and soul.

As modern medicine rediscovers the limits of replacement, women are rediscovering the wisdom of renewal.

Returning to the Second Spring

In my work at Agape Healing Arts, I often remind women: your body isn’t betraying you—it’s recalibrating you. Menopause is not the end of vitality; it is the beginning of wisdom.

The same forces that guided women for millennia still live within us. When we honor this transition with rest, nourishment, and presence, our hormones begin to harmonize again—not in monthly cycles, but in radiant equilibrium.

Menopause is the Second Spring—a time when the inner river flows back to its source and the soul blooms anew. Herbal medicine, mindful movement, pelvic care, and spiritual bathing are not relics of the past; they are the living threads of feminine medicine.

Closing Reflection

You do not need to fear this passage. You walk in the lineage of women who carried this wisdom in their bones, herbs in their hands, and grace in their hearts. May we remember their ways—not as nostalgia, but as living guidance for modern women reclaiming health as wholeness.