Your body requires enough sleep. But very often when bedtime comes at the end of a busy day, it’s hard to for your body and mind to slow down.
When you start looking into a sleep routine, you may be looking at ways that are better for sleep and relaxation.
For most people, the closest they get to adding yoga into a sleep routine is to add it in as a meditation in the lotus position. So you may not even think about doing yoga right before you go to bed as something that can help you with sleeping, but it can.
Certain yoga poses are known to help relax both the body and the mind. This helps your breathing and reduces stress. This is why yoga exercises help to promote a night of more restful sleep. Better sleep contributes to a better quality of life.
When you are well-rested, this allows the mind to function more optimally.
Here is a step by step yoga routine for sleep that you can do in your bed or beside your bed before sleep.
Forget counting sheep, ease your way into a better sleep with this yoga routine.
Downward Facing Dog
The downward-facing dog pose is the most common and where you should start. It works out the leg muscles and back muscles to remove tension. The concept of this pace is to make a triangle with your both.
Your feet are flat on the mat and your hands are in front of your feet, making a triangle with the rear as the point.
This can be modified over time to be easy on the body and slowly move the feet and hands closer to make it a tighter more flexibility building move.
Side Angle Pose
Moving out of the downward-facing dog pose, you can easily move into the side angle pose. This has you rising up to a standing V shape with the core being the point of the inverted V and your feet spread out flat on the ground.
Raise your arms and lean to one side and then the other. Your goal with this is to stretch your side muscles and do it slowly to work out any tension. You will hold and breath slowly through each side for at least twenty seconds.
Forward Bend
Moving out of the side angle pose, bring your feet together and bend at the waist. The idea with this bend is to be able to put your hands flat on the floor in front of your feet. Though this may seem like it is impossible to do, you can work your way to this.
The key point at first is to bend at the waist and try to touch your toes without causing harm to your body.
Lotus Pose
Once you have finished the forward bend, you can move to a sitting position. The ideal position is called the lotus pose. This has you sitting with your legs crossed and your hands turned palm up on your knees.
You can then close your eyes and begin your breathing techniques in slow steady meditative breaths.
Corpse Pose
The final pose is the corpse pose. This is done by laying flat on your back with your legs out, just slightly further than a shoulder-width apart. The soles of your feet should be facing outward.
Your arms should be at a 45-degree angle out to your sides with your palms facing up. Lay in this pose for several minutes, breathing slowly.
By doing this routine as the end of your sleep ritual, you can find that you will sleep better over time.
This can be tougher to do if you share the bed or have kids, but you can work around that and get your yoga routine together for bedtime and better sleep.
The important thing is consistency – you need to do your nighttime yoga regularly!
