The key to yoga for sleep is to stick with calm and restorative poses.
Though it may be tempting to think you should tire yourself out with intense workouts before bed, you actually want to calm your nervous system and wind down from your day.
A study found that a regular yoga practice improved sleep efficiency, total sleep time, and how quickly participants fell asleep, among other improvements for those living with insomnia.
Follow this routine to get started.
1. Forward Fold
Forward Fold is a gentle inversion. It activates your parasympathetic nervous system. This system slows down bodily processes. It will release tension and help you get to sleep.
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Muscles Worked: latissimus dorsi, teres minor and major, erector spinae, gluteus maximus, hamstrings
- Begin standing upright with your feet hip-distance apart.
- Take a deep inhale as you raise your arms up and out until they meet above your head.
- As you exhale, pull your knees up by contracting the fronts of your thighs and bend forward from the waist.
- Settle into the stretch by breathing in gently and grasping opposite elbows, letting your arms hang directly beneath your head — widen your stance if you’re at all worried about balance here.
- Take in 10 to 15 slow, deep breaths before you gently rise to stand.
2. Supine Twist
Twists, in general, help detox, release tension, and reduce back pain. Beyond that, it’s been found that certain reclining poses help relax your baroreflex, which helps lower your blood pressure. This can assist in helping you get to and stay asleep.
Muscles Worked: glutes, erector spinae, external obliques
- Lie on your back on the mat. As you inhale, draw your knees into your chest.
- As you exhale, extend your arms out your side at shoulder height and let your knees fall to the side, stacking your knees on top of each other. If you need or want, you can put a small cushion (like a throw pillow) under your bottom knee to support the twist.
- As you breathe into the twist, check in with your body and be sure neither shoulder blade is pulling up off the ground. If it is, you can raise your legs a little and add a cushion (or another cushion) to keep your shoulders pressing into the mat.
- Stay here for at least 5 deep breaths. On an inhale, lift your legs back to your chest, pressing into your arms to help move them, and then drop them to the other side …