Rest and Renew

Do you love to sleep? I do. Sleep is so necessary for me. It doesn’t have to be long sleep-ins or a special time. Just deep regular sufficient sleep. Then I am able to calm my mind giving my body the opportunity to rest.

So when you sleep well and you are finished resting, you feel renewed and then you are able to live such a present and fulfilled life. I can put my hand up to say that the days that I don't sleep are the days when I struggle to be focussed and present.

Doing some yoga poses (asana) is a superb way to move out of the thinking mind.  Often people think of yoga as just the physical movements. People use yoga for a work out and for sure it makes you strong but there’s more to the practice than that.

In our daily lives your body is often relying on signals from the sympathetic nervous system. This is the switched-on mode for our bodies. This is great for an active day but causes problems if it doesn’t switch off for nighttime. The physical practices in yoga moves your system out of fight or flight f(the sympathetic nervous system) into the parasympathetic system (rest and digest).

If you want to be sleeping well, and resting and renewing your body, then you need to be getting out of fight or flight and into rest and digest. One of the simplest ways to do that is to focus on a few belly breaths. This is yoga too. Breathing is one of the 8 limbs of yoga along with living in the right way and meditating.

So to this belly breathing. Breathe deeply down into your belly, let your belly fill up all the way. Breath out fully. Now on the next breath, breathe in fully and and pull down as strongly as you can right down into your belly. Let the breath come up through the body and exhale .

I was so thrilled to find the physiological reason for why this is so calming to our nervous system. By activating the belly in this way, this breathing techniques prompts your system to send rest hormones to the brain.

Think about when you breathe into your chest. It is often rapid and shallow. Often it signals you are stressed or worried. So by consciously breathing deeply and fully into your belly you will begin to bring a calming reset to your body and mind. Perfect for sleep.

So trick number one for a good night’s sleep is to bring some deep belly breathing into your day and especially before bed.

And now trick number two. This is the application of being fully present and aware. Again yoga asana are perfect for this. When we are practising yoga our mind is not focused on the every day things that usually occupy our thoughts. We are calming the mind and anxiety is dropping away. Moving through yoga poses focuses the mind on the here and now.

Trick number three is meditation. It's a good way of calming the mind and getting ready to rest and to settle . A meditation practice based around your breath is to focus on a technique to lengthen the exhale.

This is the sequence.  Breathe in fully for four counts, hold your breath for four counts and exhale for seven counts. Let’s do that again, breathe in, two, three, four, hold, two, three, four, exhale, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Now repeat for a few more rounds.

Now come back to normal breathing.

Use that short breath sequence any time you want. It's the opportunity to calm yourself, to calm your mind and be present.

We haver developed our course Yoga to Transform Sleep to bring all our experience, knowledge and learning together in a 28-day sequence to help you sleep.

We know the importance of a restful sleep and work with you to create a nighttime routine to promote a rhythm to your sleep ing patterns.

That’s trick number four: develop and stick to a nighttime routine.

• You may have heard that the blue light from screens and your tv are not that good for sleeping. That particular wavelength of light stimulates your brain making it hard to fall asleep straight away. So maybe turn off the TV and your laptop an hour before you go to sleep.
• It’s also important to exercise during the day.
• Keep your sleeping space tidy and makie it as dark and quiet as possible.
• Practice yoga. Legs up the wall is a lovely relaxing pose and probably one of the most restorative poses. Settle on the floor, sitting with your hip pressed up against the wall. Swivel yourself to lie on your back with your legs up the wall. Add blankets and support to make you feel as comfortable as possible. Now you're resting your legs up the wall. You’ve slowed down and stilled your body, you can focus on your breathing and calm your mind and soul.  Let go of all your anxiety. Feel the energy moving down from the legs and re-setting into your system. It can also help with restless leg syndrome.

There are a couple of specific types of yoga that help with sleep that we use an our Yoga to Transform Sleep course.

1. Yoga Nidra is an awake sleep. It calms your whole system and prepares you to sleep. It’s a very deep practice restoring and renewing the body through muscles, ligaments and bones and calming and resting your soul and spirit.
2. Restorative Yoga is a very very comfortable and comforting practice using lots of blankets and pillows to hold your body in comfort and ease. Ahhh it’s just perfect!

You don't need to do yoga just before bed time. You can do it any time during the day. That's the thing with yoga, it moves your system into a restorative and restful place then you can have a deep sleep. It restores your energy so it seems counter intuitive really doesn't it?  We are being active and moving the body but actually to move it and breathe deeply you're actually energised in your body and getting it ready for sleep. It's the rhythm of awake and asleep.

When I practised yoga in the evening often I would feel tired and lacking energy. But after the practice I would feel more alive but then also always really sleep well. So yoga just resets your system.

Yoga enables you to feel energised and then to rest well at night. So get into the rhythm of being fully awake and sleeping deeply. Fully integrate both sides of the same coin when you commit to a regular yoga practice to help you sleep.

Look at our Yoga to Transform YouTube channel for more yoga practices and if you're ready to fully transform your sleep habits purchase our Yoga to Transform Sleep course 

Night night!

Namaste