Can Yoga Help You Sleep Better?
The pleasures and benefits of yoga are widely understood: yoga can improve physical strength and flexibility, improve breathing, reduce stress, and enhance mental focus. What may be less well-known are the positive effects that yoga can have on sleep.
Here at Inbloom Yoga is holistic. It'll help your mind, body, and soul. Sleep is essential to health and happiness, which is an area we explore in our virtual corporate yoga session.
This article, originally published on elitedaily website, explores how yoga can help to help better sleep.
Here’s 5 Ways Science Says Yoga Aids In Sleep
1. Yoga Tells The Brain To “Shut Up”
It’s not just physical: “The breath links the mind and our body, as the breath slows down and our movements mirror the speed of the breath, the mind naturally becomes more spacious and we settle into the deep quiet that has always been there.
2. Yoga Eases Pain And Discomfort
Maybe sleeping with back pain, joint pain, muscle stiffness, or any physical discomfort is something you’ve convinced yourself to “just live with,” but it needn’t be that way.
Yoga movements can increase mobility and strength, without undue stress, in swollen, painful joints. Yoga won't only relax your brain, it will ease your body into a deep and refreshing sleep.
3. Yoga Stabilizes The Nervous System
Chances are, you’ll experience hyperarousal during your day, a tense instance where your “fight or flight” senses are engaged, which can keep you awake later even when you’re exhausted.
Yoga can bring you to homeostasis, your nervous system’s “rest and digest” state, within minutes. With a yoga routine, you can mind can naturally unwind from this tension and relax into sleep more easily.
4. Yoga Can Be Your Bedtime Routine
Setting a regular nighttime ritual — or, in decidedly unsexy terms, “sleep hygiene” — is as important as establishing a morning workday routine, if not more so. Also, turning off the news and running a regular yoga sequence at bedtime could be just as good for your sanity as your sleep.
Getting both your body and mind in the habit of recognizing when it's "bedtime," so to speak, will help train you to fall asleep more naturally and to feel sleepy in a more regulated way.
5. Yoga Reduces Stress
The most obvious and instantaneous benefit of yoga is the reduction of cortisol (a.k.a. the “stress hormone”) levels in the brain. When in the mindful mode of yoga, you’re focused on “being” rather than “doing,” aware of your thoughts but not inclined to take any action or trigger emotional stressors.
Reduced stress is beneficial in nearly every area of your life, but just imagine how it translates when your head hits the pillow and you're not worrying about every little thing going on in your life. Falling asleep has never been this easy.
In Summary, yoga can help you fall asleep quicker, get a better night’s sleep, and improve your quality of sleep overall. If you are in a place where you could do with more yoga sessions, we would be happy to help! Simply email us and we’ll discuss, no strings attached.