According to Kate Bennett, a yin co-founder and yoga teacher and fitness blog writer believes that including yoga asana in your bedtime routine helps to enhance your deep sleep.
How to Lower Bedtime Stress?
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Getting an unexpected email or any news may trigger stress response before your sleep. Naturally, the brain receives new information, which needs immediate action, so that stress hormones are released to manage the situation.
Watching something like scary movies or other adventurous shows may divert your attention and lower the stress hormones. You can also perform a sleep meditation affirmation.
Hormones can initiate your sensitive nervous system or the fight or flight form, make the body develop physically for managing heart rate, dilating pupils, and improving muscle tension. Therefore, when you lie down and close your eyes that your body is not able to rest and stop the sleep and rest mode. It also stops you from getting quality sleep.
Fortunately, you can manage the hormone responses and use them for benefits. Maintaining a good bedtime routine can help to balance calmness before your snooze and allow your wakeup with refresh feeling.
Try to avoid technological stressors before sleeping and keep away the digital gadgets. Doing gentle yoga is the best way to make your mind and body to sleep.
How Does Doing Yoga Help Before Sleep?
Restorative is a kind of yoga that is suitable for the evenings. It uses floor-based yoga, which might have performed in a daytime called vinyasa class, but try them for longer, motivating you to relax and find support with pillows and blankets.
This gradual relaxation can support in switch off the fight or flight method, activating instead of your parasympathetic-nervous-system, which helps the body to sleep and digest.
Your bed is a good place for doing some restorative yoga poses before sleep and helps to relax and feel comfortable. You may even get that drift off before finishing practice.
It does not have to be total body movement, either. Spending a little amount of time for massage can quickly soothe and easy to perform, especially during relaxing on the sofa after one long day or even last thing before you sleep during you sit on the edge of the bed.
Your hands are an excellent place to focus – nowadays, we practice them so frequently for making and looking over, yet we once in a while give them any affection. Peruse on to locate a couple of straightforward paces for extending and self-massaging your hands. Including a couple of drops of a relaxing fragrance will help to provide calming effects.
Best Yoga Asana for Better Sleep
Viparita Karani
The Viparita Karani is a Sanskrit term meaning legs up the wall pose, which is both a mudra and an asana in hatha yoga. In modern yoga, it is commonly a complete supported pose used a wall or a pile of blankets.
If you need a nap in day time but do not have free time, then Legs-up-The-wall pose can give you more needed rest. Yogi Gail Boorstein Grossman claims that 20 minutes of yoga helps to promote restful sleep.
You can practice Legs-Up-The-Wall Pose with or without using a bolster. The variation with a bolster is ideal for people who are looking for back pain relief yoga. It provides less impact on the lower back.
It also makes your body to be more restful to increase your benefits.
Using a bolster with yoga helps to restore the body balance and relieve the effects of insomnia, reduce fatigue, and provide refreshes for lungs and heart.
Menstruating women and pregnant women with 2nd or 3rd trimesters should avoid this yoga.
Precautions
- The Viparita Karani asana is a mild inversion and must be avoided during menstruation.
- People suffering from serious neck and back pain must avoid this yoga.
- Avoid this yoga, if you have eye conditions like glaucoma.
- If you feel a tingling in your feet while practicing this yoga, flex your knees and try to touch the soles and get your heels near to pelvis.
Beginner’s Tip
A beginner may find this yoga asana difficult when aligning the proper pose. Inhale in a way that your head of the thigh bone is strongly pressed against the wall. It will support to release the belly, spine, and groin. Imagine the breathing going into the torso and push the thigh bone heads near the wall. As you breathe out every time, let your thigh bones press more onto the wall and torso pull apart from the wall.
Setu Bandha Sarvangasana
Backbends are popular for their restorative benefits and more suitable for bedtime yoga routine to help the sleep. The restorative version of Setu-bandha-Sarvangasana is considered the best for triggering sleepiness. Therefore, use blankets and bolsters to manage the body while practicing.
Charlotte Bell, the author of Mindful Yoga,- Mindful Life: A-Guide-for-Everyday-Practice, explains how the restorative version of this asana can help to relieve mind in busy times.
She noticed at restorative yoga asana for sleep in link to those experiencing from Seasonal-Affective-Disorder, especially the linked feeling of fatigue. It was shown that the pose can help to restore energies and calm down the brain to trigger sleep.
Precaution
- Avoid this asana if you are feeling neck sprain and take your health expert help.
- Pregnant women should avoid Setu Bandha Sarvangasana
- Doing this yoga at the entire capacity. They must support it under expert guidance.
Beginner’s Tips
Beginners must remember that when you roll your shoulders below, do not over force from ears. It will tend to do overstretching their neck. Slowly lift your shoulders top near to ear when pushing the shoulder blades inside away from the spine.
Supta Baddha Konasana
Stupa Baddha Konasana also described a reclining bound angle. You can practice anything to use as a prop, like a towel, blanket, bolster, or pile.
It helps to decrease the heart rate and support a peaceful night’s sleep. Performing this yoga also decreases fatigue and insomnia symptoms. It also gives benefits to women during menstruation.
Precautions
- Doing Stupa Baddha Konasana should be avoided in case of having groin injuries, knee injuries, should injury, hip injury, and lower back pain.
- A pregnant woman should also skips doing this yoga without expert guidance. If it is recommended, then keep head and chest raised when doing this pose.
- Female who had recent childbirth also should avoid this pose for 8-weeks or till pelvic muscle get strong.
Beginner’s Tip
As a beginner, you may feel a strain in your groin and inward thighs as you practice this asana. To manage this, carefully raise your feet marginally off the floor until you get comfortable.
Balasana
The Balasana yoga also called a child’s pose, which is suitable for bedtime to relieve worries of the day. This pose is best for calming the anxious mind and provide relaxing sleep like a baby. There are different variations of the Child’s pose, including the wide knees variation.
The goal of this yoga is to provide rest, so expert yogis recommend that use anything that makes yoga comfortable and enhances sleep.
Doing a child pose yoga helps to activate the nervous system and provide a relaxing response.
Precautions
- If you feel heavy or difficult to keep the head on the ground, you can use a cushion to feel relaxed.
- It is a great idea to abstain from doing this asana if you feel knee injury or diarrhea.
- People with hypertension must not play out this asana.
Beginner’s Tips
It is not a general practice to keep breathing completely and consciously for the torso. As you begin doing yoga practice, you can practice Balasana to make your body ready for the deep forward bend.
Ananda Balasana
Ananda Balasna also called a happy baby pose, which is peaceful for bedtime. It provides a relaxing mind and better sleep.
Initially, straps are recommended if you experience to reach ankles. Therefore, make the yoga pose more comfortable as possible. Imitating a Balasana, yogis can form ankles or feet to create a pose, which offers complete body relaxation. This pose helps to relieve stress when performed before sleeping. However, pregnant women should avoid this yoga.
Precautions
- It is important to practice Ananda Balasana properly to prevent injury.
- People with neck injury also skip this yoga.
- You must also keep your spine straight while doing this yoga to skip injury.
- Pregnant women and menstruating females should also avoid this yoga.
- People with knee injuries and high blood pressure should also avoid this yoga.
Beginner’s Tips
If you feel difficult to hold the feet, use a strap by folding it around the middle arch.
When you perform Ananda Balasana, let your tailbone bend towards the roof. But try to make sure your tailbone is bent toward the floor. After that, the hip’s flexibility will expand.
Utthan Pristhasana
Utthan Pristhasana also called Lizard pose, which is challenging for beginners. However, when you get regular practice, it helps to trigger deep sleep. The Utthan Pristhasana promotes a real focus on breathing, which helps to open up chest and hips and prepare the body for other yoga poses. Therefore, it is the best part of your yoga for bedtime.
Precautions
People with the following conditions should avoid Utthan Pristhasana:
- Condition of lower back or sciatica pain
- Hand or wrist injury
- You had surgery and recovering knees, neck, feet, arms, hips, and hands.
- Feeling weakness in forearms, shoulders, hand, or wrists.
Paschimottanasana
The Paschimottanasana also called as seated-forward-bend as it is a simple and most adopting pose for falling asleep.
This pose helps to stretch out back muscles, spine, and neck. It is also believed that Paschimottanasana relieves stress and promotes night sleep.
This yoga asana requires warmup before doing and good practice to benefits.
Precautions
- Skip this yoga if you are suffering from diarrhea or asthma.
- Avoid doing this yoga if you have a back injury or do this yoga under expert guidance.
- Pregnant women can practice this yoga under the guidance with separated legs so that fetus and navel will not be compromised and spread the chest upwards.
Beginner’s Tip
A beginner ought to figure out how to feel loose while doing the front twist.
It is increasingly important if the asana remembers sitting for the floor. At the point when you push forward and feel that the space among pubis and navel bringing down, stop, raise yourself a bit, and continue pushing ahead. As a newcomer, your firm muscles of the hamstring may acquire it difficult to flex excessively. It may look practically identical to sitting. With day by day practice, your body will turn out to be progressively versatile.
Savasana
Whenever you perform yoga, try finishing it with the Savasana. This yoga asana is created to close the body and provide a relaxation response perfect before going to sleep.
It also shown to lower your blood pressure. Use yoga Nidra to get yogic sleep and feel additional rest as you continue doing the regular practice. You can practice it at bed with bulky blankets and lying flat.
Precautions
The Savasana is safe and can be done by everyone. Unless your doctor has recommended you not to lay on your back, you can do this asana. Pregnant women should rest overhead and chest on the pillow for comfort.
Beginner’s Tip
In the busy and stressful schedule, it is quite difficult to relax. The most difficult thing about Shavasana is to release the head of the thigh bone to soften the groin. You can use 5kg weight over your thighs, at the groin, and imagine the top of thigh bone pushed down because of the weight.
Benefits of Bedtime yoga
Make you forget worries
The focused mindfulness and breathing that yoga needs to help the empty head of any negative thinking and bad situation we experienced during the day. These thoughts might distract the mind and prevent the falling asleep right away. Doing yoga helps to have a clear mind so that you can sleep more without worrying thoughts.
Concentrating on breathing also removes stress and reduce blood pressure, which helps to fall asleep faster. Yoga can also beneficial for those who suffer from an anxiety disorder that causes sleep problems.
Prevents Using a Sleep Stopping Mobile Device
Browsing a laptop or phone before bedtime can make it more difficult to get sleep. The blue light from mobile screens also affects because this light follows daylight and triggers stress hormones called cortisol, which will keep you awake for more time. Doing yoga before sleep instead of watching Tv or online browsing could help the body to rest and sleep quicker.
Relieve Aches and Pains
According to research, yoga before sleep helps to ease the lower back pain, which prevents drifting off without taking painkillers. Yoga relaxes the muscles and promotes circulation by inducing restful sleep. It also helps the body to remove toxins from organs and tissues and provide quality sleep.
Promote Next Day Fresh Beginning
Going to bed with a reasonable head and having the option to get enough long times of value sleep implies we’re bound to be prepared to take on the following day with vitality and a positive mentality. It can even be utilized as a clear advantage to assist us with fighting negativity.
Add Yoga to Your Bedtime Ritual
Yoga can be a vital part of the bedtime ritual. You can improve your experience by listening to soft music and diffusing mild scent or essential oil in the air like lavender, which encourages sleep. Using essential oils after bedtime yoga, make sleep even better, and improve sleep patterns.