I’m in the middle of teaching a class when it starts.

A hot wave, rushing through my whole body. No warning. It just arrives.

And I have to keep teaching.

So I keep my voice steady. I keep guiding everyone else’s breath. On the outside everything looks completely normal, the class carries on, nobody knows a thing.

Inside I’m panicking and waiting for it to be over.

Comic and tragic at the same time.

For a long time I didn’t even know what it was.

I was concerned. I didn’t have a name for it, and not having a name for something makes it so much bigger than it is.

Now I know what it is. And that changed something.

Not control. I still don’t have that. I don’t know when they come and I don’t know why. Some are mild. Some are hard, with a kind of panic attack riding along with them.

But I know it now. I’m expecting it.

That’s mine, by the way. I’m not describing yours.

Hot flashes don’t come in one size. Some women get a handful over the whole of menopause and shrug. Some get them every hour and can’t work through them. Some never get a single one.

So please don’t measure yours against mine. Whatever yours are doing is what yours are doing.

What I stopped doing when a hot flash starts

I stopped fighting it.

I let it flood my body. I feel the whole thing. There’s no escaping it anyway, and trying to escape it only put panic on top of the heat.

And then I go looking for my breath.

Which, at that moment, doesn’t exist.

That’s the part nobody tells you. When a hot flash arrives, your breath goes somewhere without asking your permission. So before anything else, you go and find it.

The breathing exercise for hot flashes, step by step

Let the flash be there for a moment. Don’t fight it. It’s already happening.

Then bring your attention to your breath, wherever it is.

If you’re at home: one hand on your chest, one hand on your belly. Close your eyes. Feel the belly rise when you breathe in. Feel it fall when you breathe out. Just watch it for a few rounds.

For me, the hand on the chest helps me calm more.

If yours wake you at night, the same thing works lying down, both hands where they are, eyes already closed.

If you’re standing in a queue at the supermarket: no hands, no closed eyes, nothing anybody can see. You just stay connected to your breath. That’s the whole thing. It works standing up, in public, in the middle of teaching a class. I know, because that’s where I do it.

Then start counting, quietly, inside yourself.

In for four.

Out for six.

The out-breath is longer than the in-breath. That part matters, and I’ll tell you why in a minute.

Keep going as long as you need. As long as it takes to feel calmer.

There’s nothing here you can get wrong. The only difficult part is staying with the breath instead of drifting off into your thoughts.

And the first time? Honestly, I didn’t do much with it. It was clumsy. But now I feel one coming and I’m already better prepared.

Why breathing helps a hot flash, and what it will not do

I want to be honest with you here, because there’s a lot online that isn’t.

This breath will not stop your hot flashes. It will not give you fewer of them.

What it changes is what happens to YOU inside one.

When our breath is short and quick, we call up the sympathetic part of our nervous system. Fight or flight. The same one we’d need if a bear came at us.

When the breath is slow and deep, and the exhale is longer than the inhale, we activate the parasympathetic part. The one that helps us feel calm and centred. The one that lets us thrive instead of just survive.

And that’s not a small thing. The panic is what makes a hot flash unbearable. Take the panic out, and what’s left is heat.

Heat passes.

Riding the wave

That’s why I call it riding the wave.

If you go along with it, you come out the other side in one piece.

If you fight it, you’ll still come out. You always come out. But it will feel like a battle.

The wave is coming either way. You get some say in how you ride it.

And something I didn’t expect

I’ve stopped seeing hot flashes as the enemy.

They pull me into the present moment, which is the hardest thing in the world to do on purpose. Even for me. Even though I teach this stuff.

It’s like my body is asking me to pause and pay attention at exactly the moment I want to keep doing.

Being, instead of doing.

I’m not going to say it’s a gift. Some days it’s just annoying and I’d rather it stopped. And that’s ok.

But the breath is there every time. Even when it feels like it isn’t.

Before you close this: the next time one comes, don’t do anything clever.

Just count. Four in, six out.

And then hit reply and tell me what happened. I’m only an email away.

P.S. If the nights are the hard part for you, The 3AM Reset is three days of small things for exactly that.