Unlocking the secrets to falling asleep with yoga.

Wondering how yoga postures, breathing and mindful practices help you to improve your sleep? Here’s how yoga helps us to wind down, relax and drift off to sleep.

To fall asleep, we need to relax,

And to relax we need to feel safe, calm and settled and not in a state of low level stress, agitation or arousal, which is when we’re shifting towards our ‘flight or flight’ mode, the sympathetic end of our autonomic nervous system.

The ‘relaxation response’, is the process of the parasympathetic or ‘rest and digest’ end of the autonomic nervous system becoming dominant.

Yoga poses and simple breathing help to release tension and settle your body.

We often discount the tension that builds up in our bodies throughout the day: An inactive and stressful day (even if the stress is low level), may have you feeling ‘tired yet wired’ affecting your musculature, breathing and hormonal functioning, sabotaging your sleep by breaking the mechanisms of relaxation.

The state of tension in your muscles and breathing sends powerful messages to your brain influencing it to react, and the resulting neurochemistry affects mood and influences sleep.

The simple sleep sequence and basic breathing (as developed by Lisa Sanfilippo) are specifically designed to reach tension hot spots in the body like the neck, shoulder, hips and lower back, helping you to find the places you’re holding tension to ‘melt them down’, and to soften and expand the breath.

Most of the poses in the sleep sequence are at low level or on the floor, are gentle and accessible with an emphasis on slowing the breath, exhaling and even yawning! As the body moves into a relaxed state, it influences the brain and the chain reaction of the ‘relaxation response’, takes place.

By focusing on the body first, yoga practices influence the brain

‘Top down’ or ‘mind over matter’ approaches, don’t include the important ‘bottom up’ or ‘mind within matter’ process which is integral to yoga.

The vagus nerve, (vagus meaning wandering), picks up information about the quality of our breathing, heart rate and digestion, sending it to the brain. As the main nerve of the parasympathetic nervous system, 80% of nerve impulses are from body to the brain (and only 20% in the reverse direction). The state of the body influences the brain more than we think it does! By relaxing the body through yoga postures and breathing, we are consciously manipulating (in the best sense of the word!) the parasympathetic nervous system into dominace for the purpose of sleep.

Yoga develops interoception or awareness of the internal state of the body

Recognising when you’re tired, hungry or cold, rather than ignoring signals from the body is a skill of body awareness that yoga practices develop. ‘Listening your body’ through interoception stops you pushing through tiredness and helps you to acknowledge your need for rest, relaxation or winding down for sleep.

Self relaxation practices like Restorative yoga help to relax deeply and restore depleted energy

Restorative yoga is a deep relaxation practice where the body is placed in a still position of comfort and ease to facilitate deep relaxation. It’s a powerful tool to unhook the chronic stress response through regulating the nervous system.

It’s also a highly effective practice to help ‘mop up’ after a bad night’s sleep, managing your fatigue, by ‘putting energy back on the grid’ and rebuilding and resourcing depleted energy. Through learning to relax ourselves in this practice, we get better at it!

Guided relaxation practices like yoga nidra shift the body and mind to deep states of relaxation

Here a teacher or facilitator verbally guides a student or practitioner into states of deep relaxation (with slow brain waves found in sleep), although the mind is conscious and aware (unlike sleep). It’s usually practiced lying down (or in an alternative comfortable position) and includes a ‘body scan’, directing attention around the body, effectively a form of progressive muscle relaxation.

Because the mind is conscious during restorative yoga and yoga nidra, neither practices reduce sleep drive (the sleep pressure which builds up from the time of waking), so your ability to fall asleep at bedtime is not affected.

Invigorating and Activating Yoga Postures to start your day

Just as relaxing poses take tension out of the body and downshift the nervous system at bedtime, so activating and energising yoga movement in the earlier part of the day increases alertness and focus, so that you get to start your day mentally alert with your body ready for action. The type of poses (asana) for this could include standing poses, ‘sun salutations’, flowing movement often synchronised with breathing.

Relaxing breathing techniques help us to shift down from an aroused, agitated, anxious or or stressed state to a relaxed and restful state,

Breath work or pranayama is integral to yoga, with many calming breath work techniques, handed down the yoga tradition. These are effective in ‘downshifting’ our nervous system from activated towards the relaxation response. We don’t switch off, like machines(!)… we drop down or shift into sleep.

Mindfulness and meditation techniques

Meditation trains the brain (over time) to relax deeply on cue, slowing down brain wave activity, facilitating the relaxation response state and lessening the distress caused by worrying thoughts that stop you from falling asleep easily. Meditation help us to come back to a calm, centred and relaxed state when the ‘parade’ of anxious thoughts take over and keeps us awake in the middle of the night!

If you’re new to meditation, simple mindfulness practices (like noticing your 5 senses in a short micropractice), can be a good place to start as they bring you into the present moment, lessening the tendency to ruminate and slip into worrying thought trails.

Therapeutic Journalling

A practice of reflection involving a few minutes of writing to express troubling thoughts, unresolved problems or even noting unfinished tasks. Acknowledging these issues before going to sleep means they don’t bubble up in the night demanding attention! A simple journalling practice of a ‘brain dump’ can aid mental indigestion, reducing middle of the night wakings, improving the continuity and quality of your sleep.

Sources:

Sleep Recovery, Lisa Sanfilippo, 2020

Yoga therapy for Insomnia and Sleep Recovery, Lisa Sanfilippo, 2019