ABOUT MICHELLE
This isn’t what I thought midlife would be like.
I thought I knew my body. I'd been teaching it, studying it, paying close attention to it for over two decades. And then — hot flashes at 3am, a metabolism that seemed to reorganize itself overnight, a pelvic floor that had opinions about sneezing. The symptoms nobody warned me about, arriving all at once, in a body I thought I understood.
But also — and I mean this — a greater sense of myself than I've ever had. A lower tolerance for being told this is just what happens, for being handed a pamphlet instead of a real conversation.
If any of that sounds familiar, you're in the right place.
What my body taught me
In 2021, a hysterectomy for endometrial cancer sent me into surgical menopause overnight.
Not gradually. Not with a gentle transition. I went to sleep one person and woke up in a different hormonal reality, with no runway and no map. The fatigue was profound. The body I'd spent 20 years learning felt suddenly unreliable. I had a heating pad on my abdomen and a stack of books I couldn't concentrate on and a very patient cat who sat on my chest while I figured out what came next.
What came next was rebuilding. Slowly, carefully, and from the inside — not from a textbook.
What I knew before was good. What I know now is earned.
Yoga and strength training for midlife women
I'm Michelle Marlahan. I've been teaching yoga and strength training for over 25 years — and before that, I was a business consultant who liked finding where systems were breaking down. It turns out those two things are not as different as they sound. I still think in patterns. I still look for what's actually causing the problem before I make a suggestion.
What I'm convinced of now, after all of it: you need both yoga and strength training. Not as a novelty combination — as a considered response to what midlife bodies are actually asking for. Yoga alone isn't enough. Strength training alone misses something essential. Together, built slowly and practiced with real attention, they change things.
My online studio, It's All Yoga, is where that conviction lives. Live yoga and strength classes, small by design, personal by necessity. I know your name. I remember your injury. And if you've been quietly certain that strength training isn't for someone like you — I've heard that before, and I have thoughts.
I also run the Mindful Muscle Club — a 12-week cohort strength program for women ready to go deeper — and Barbie Gym, a Saturday morning in-person class in Sacramento for the women who want to do this in the same room as other humans.
Get strong as slowly as possible
Slow is not a consolation prize.
Everything in the wellness industry is selling you speed. Results in 30 days. Transformation by summer. The implicit message that if you're not moving fast enough, you're doing it wrong.
I have watched that approach sideline more women than it's helped. An injury in week two. A program abandoned because the pace was punishing. A woman who came back six months later, starting from zero, having lost the ground she'd gained — because she tried to build the sky before she had a foundation.
Get strong as slowly as possible. Build what your body can actually absorb. Progress in a way that sticks. That's not the cautious version of strength training — it's the only version that compounds.
And: your body is not a problem to solve. It is the story of your life — the surgeries, the hormonal shifts, the decades of showing up, the things you've carried and the things you've survived. It deserves a practice that honors all of that. Not just the parts that photograph well.
What changes when you add strength training
One of my students told me for months that strength training couldn't give her what yoga gave her.
Too wound up, too tight, too much in her head for weights to help. I didn't argue. I just kept teaching.
A few weeks in, she emailed me.
Strength training, she said, wasn't releasing tension the way yoga did — it was stopping her from getting wound up in the first place. More energy. More physical confidence. Less to let go of, because there was less accumulated.
That's the thing I'm building toward for every woman who finds her way here.
The world behind the work
I live in the Sacramento, California area with a rescue dog named Meatball and a black cat named Magic, who has appointed himself quality control officer for everything that happens in this business.
I write a weekly letter called Currently — real talk, honest opinions, the occasional strong feeling about pistachio butter — every Tuesday, for women who are done rushing through their workouts, their meals, and their lives. It is not a content strategy. It's a letter.
I also curate Magic's Cabinet, a seasonal collection of things I'm actually using and loving — clean beauty, vegan recipes, eco finds, books, shows — updated four times a year. The kind of recommendations you'd get from a friend who has already done the research and wants to save you the trouble.
The classes, the cohort, the newsletter, the cabinet — it's all the same world. Movement and intention and real talk and slowing down enough to actually feel your life. It's all yoga, even the parts that don't look like it.
What’s here for you
If something here has felt like recognition — here's where to begin.
The studio is the heart of it. Start with a 10-day guest pass — full access, no commitment, just come and see if it feels like home.
If you're ready to go deep on strength specifically, the Mindful Muscle Club runs in cohorts throughout the year. Saturday mornings in Sacramento, that's Barbie Gym — in person, with other women, doing the work together. Email me for details.
And if you're not ready to move yet — the Tuesday letter is free, it's real, and it's a good place to start. Sign up below.