What Yoga Means to Your Overall Health

Three Part Series – Part 2: Sleep

Approximately one third of all adults have trouble sleeping through the night, whether your insomnia is related to stress (covered in part 1 of this series), or too much stimulation (foods, activities), it’s important to give your body the rest and time to heal it deserves during sleep. Adding yoga into your routine can help ease stress and help you fall asleep at night.

Our bodies are designed for sleep to come effortlessly. Here are some tips to help you get there before we jump into the yoga part:

Create an Environment that Will Help You Sleep – your bedroom should be tranquil and inviting. Make it comfortable and conducive to sleep. Eliminate ambient light and any noise that could disturb your sleep. If possible, conduct other activities like reading, work-related material, TV and bill paying outside of the bedroom. In time, this will create the body’s expectation that the bedroom is where it goes to relax and rest.

End the Day with a Calming Routine – Try to go to bed at the same time every night, and create a routine that prepares you for sleep. A pre-bed routine helps communicate to your subconscious that it’s time to sleep. Be sure your routine is relaxing rather than stimulating. The point of setting a routine is to calm your mind and quiet your nerves prior to bed-time.

Do a Relaxation Exercise – Taking some time to do a short relaxation exercise just before getting into bed is an excellent way of letting go of stressors. It doesn’t have to be hard or elaborate. Simply lying on your back in corpse pose (savasana) with your eyes closed – breathing, moving your breath through the body start at your scalp and move toward your toes. Soften your forehead, eyes, face and jaw. Continue relaxing each area of your body until you reach your toes. Surrender to gravity.

Stay in this relaxed state for a few minutes, letting the floor support you. Focus on your breathing, releasing all other concerns. Let your breath come from deep in your abdomen, and let it flow smoothly, slowly and evenly. This simple exercise is a way of telling your body it is okay to stop thinking, stressing and working.

Enter the yoga part. Exercise is essential to a well-rested body. Much of our day is spent working our brains, not our bodies. To balance this, it is important to also work your body. Doing yoga not only prepares your body for sleep, but it helps achieve the balance that our bodies crave to sleep well.

Stepping on the mat helps clear the clutter in our heads, unwinding your mind and calming the nervous system (all attributes of a yoga class) will help you sleep better.

Self-reflect on the mat during class rather than before bed time. This will help create the habit in the body that bed time is not for self-reflection and to do lists, rather it’s for restorative sleep. Learning to quiet your mind comes with a consistent yoga practice, and can be useful to you in many other aspects of life. Think of your time on the mat as balance. There is a time to practice, a time to think and a time to rest.