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Relief Insomnia with Yoga
Marion Ancker, Yogacircle on 21 June, 2010 | 
00:00 - Bedtime
01:20 - Mind is buzzing. Can’t stop thinking about things.
02:34 - If I’m not asleep soon, I won’t even get 4 hours.
03:55 - Only 3 hours sleep left. It’s not going to be enough.
07:00 - Time to get up. Did I sleep at all?
Chronic insomnia is extremely debilitating. Do something about it.
Do you experience nights where no matter what you try, you just can’t get to sleep? Or nights where you’re constantly in and out of sleep, unable to stay asleep once you finally drop off? If so, you could be experiencing chronic insomnia.
Insomnia is one of the most common health complaints today. If you’re one of the many people that have trouble falling asleep at night, you’ll know how much it impacts on your day. It’s a difficult and hindering cycle to be trapped in.
Yoga could be a way out.
Yoga is a natural solution to sleep problems. And it’s a lot easier to use to your advantage than you might think. Some breathing exercises and relaxation techniques take just minutes, and below I’ll describe some simple yoga postures that can ease you back to sleep during a restless night.
This article reveals the main causes for sleeplessness, and explains why and how yoga will help you sleep better. I will describe postures that physically prepare your body for sleep, stretches that get rid of the itchy, restless leg syndrome that can come with tiredness, and even positions that direct blood to the area of the brain involved in sleep regulation.
Why sleep is so important
Each one of us needs good quality sleep to remain healthy. When we’re awake, our nerve cells as well as our muscles are constantly active. Sleep is a natural restorative cycle that allows the body to rest and properly regenerate itself, so that it can continue to function properly. Sleep is a basic necessity to living, and it’s vital to your heart health. Sleep itself also plays a vital role in preventing mental ill health, such as depression and anxiety.
So why can’t I sleep? The main reasons people have difficulty getting to sleep or staying asleep include stress and worries, depression, menopause, disrupted sleep pattern, hormonal changes, metabolic functions, and physiological factors such as tension or high blood pressure. You can ease these conditions with some gentle yoga practice. Incorporating yoga into your life will allow you to fall asleep more easily, and to get a better quality of sleep.
Avoid drugging yourself to sleep
Yoga calms the mind, relaxes the physical body, and relieves stress and anxiety. It tackles both the physical and the psychological grounds of insomnia, which is why it has been proven to improve sleep. For most people it is also a better choice than drugs, which interfere with deeper stages of sleep, impair functioning when awake, can be addictive and often neglect to help the underlying causes of chronic sleep problems.
Your nervous system, your sleep pattern, and yoga When you practice yoga, the quality of your sleep will improve because of the calming and balancing effect that yoga has on the nervous system.
Energy flows through the body electrically, via nerves, and yoga eases the tensions that can interrupt this energy flow. This alleviates feelings of dullness or tiredness and calms your nerves by allowing your physical body to return to a balanced state of energy. With calmer and rejuvenated nerves, you will sleep better and feel less restless, twitchy, uncomfortable or ‘overtired’.
Also, practicing inverted postures where the heart is lower than the hips or legs actually increases blood circulation to the sleep centre in the brain, having the effect of normalising your sleep cycle. Inverted postures include the Shoulderstand (Sarvangasana), the Plow Pose (Halasana), the Headstand (Shirshasana) and the Legs-up-the-Wall Pose (Viparita Karani).
Helping with hormonal triggers of insomnia If you think the cause of your sleeplessness could be hormonal, for example the menopause, you can make yoga really work for you by practicing postures which help to regulate hormones.
The inverted postures described above stimulate the endocrine system by pressurising and depressurising specific hormone-secreting glands. The subtle compressions and decompressions of the glands bring the system back into balance.
Forward bends are also good for balancing the adrenals, for example the Cobra Pose (Bhujanasana) and the Upward-Facing Dog (Urdhva Mukha Svanasana) will gently stimulate glands by massaging the area where the adrenals sit, on top of the kidneys on the back.
Relieving tension
A major benefit of yoga is the relief of tension, which guarantees easier sleep for anybody. Yoga makes some key changes to your body both physically and metabolically – it deepens the breathing, reduces stress hormones, slows down heart rate and blood pressure, and relaxes the muscles. All of these are changes you can feel, and changes that make sleep come easier.
Before going to bed, you can do a few gentle stretches to relieve tension and help you relax. Happy Baby (Ananda Balasana) is a good one because it releases the lower back and hips, leaving you feeling looser and more relaxed. And the Goddess Pose (Supta Baddha Konasana) opens the groins, again relieving stiffness and tension that will keep you awake. Luckily, both of these poses only require a small space in front of your bed, and you can even use them during a bad night to help you get back to sleep.
Restless leg syndrome
It’s that feeling of itchiness, of needing to twitch and stretch your legs constantly. It makes it impossible to stay still when all you’re trying to do is rest.
But there is a way to relieve it.
Restless leg syndrome comes from a build-up of stress hormones in your muscle tissue, and just a few stretches will detoxify the cells and lengthen the muscles, opening them up and allowing them to receive the nutrients they need.
Just a few examples...
Sitting Forward Bend (Paschimottasana)
Head-to-Knee Forward Bend (Janu Sirsasana) Downward Dog (Adho Mukha Svanasana
Yoga and your sleep pattern
Apart from normalising your sleep pattern at the level of the brain, yoga can increase you ratio of deep sleep to light sleep too, which makes a big difference to how you feel when you wake up.
Take athletes. Studies have shown that athletes and aerobically active people do not take any more or any less sleep than inactive people. However, they do get proportionally more deep sleep than light sleep, which is what you need to wake up feeling rested and refreshed. The simple aerobic benefits of yoga help yogis to sleep better at night because their bodies are physically ready for rest.
Preparing the body for sleep
We’ve already looked at some great poses here, from directing blood to the sleep centre of the brain to curing the restless leg syndrome devil. Here is the most important pose:
The Shoulderstand (Sarvangasana). When practiced immediately before bed, this pose literally prepares the body for sleep. And if you can do it during the day once, it helps compensate for lost sleep.
Yoga is a relaxation technique
Before I finish this article, I want to share with you some helpful advice on breathing and really relaxing. It’s an important part of yoga, and it’s a key aspect in making yoga work for your insomnia.
Firstly, choose slow, deep and rhythmical abdominal breathing when you’re clearing your mind and preparing your body for sleep. Unlike shallow breaths from your upper chest, deep abdominal breathing allows more oxygen in and thus relaxes you and eases tension or anxiousness. When you try this, breathe slowly and evenly, and aim to exhale for twice as long as you inhale.
Getting to sleep
If you’re having trouble getting to sleep at all, experiment with some short relaxation exercises just before getting in bed...
Lie on your back in the Corpse Pose (Savasana) and close your eyes. Now systematically address every part of your body from the bottom up. You can start by relaxing your toes and ankles, moving up the legs and releasing your back. You can even soften your forehead and jaw, and try to relax your eyes and you scalp. Tensing and relaxing each muscle group helps loosen them and release tension, especially in the neck and shoulders.
Staying asleep
If it’s staying asleep that’s the battle, then the next time you wake up try practicing some of yoga’s weird and wonderful breathing techniques:
Hissing Tongue Breath (Sitali) - A cooling and calming breath. Just stick your tongue out and curl the edges up to make a U-shape or tube, which you can breathe through deeply, making a hissing sound. Then place your tongue on the upper palate of your mouth and gently tilt your head down, exhaling slowly through the nose.
Humming Bee Breath (Bhramari) - Close your ears with your thumbs. Cover your eyes with your index and middle fingers and place your small fingers just below your nostrils. Take a long, steady breath in, keeping your lips closed but the back of your mouth cavity open. Hold this breath for a moment. Then exhale through your nostrils, humming gently. After repeating for two or three minutes, the vibrations should spread throughout your face. This breath has an immediate calming effect on your nervous system.
Including yoga as one of the things you choose to enjoy in your life will offer you abundant benefits, including relief from insomnia. Yoga gets you into the habit of relaxing, and allows relaxation to be as easy as it should be. Regular practice allows you to improve your flexibility, mediation and relaxation techniques. It teaches you how to feel more relaxed, sleep much better and wake up feeling centred and refreshed, ready to start your day.
If you are interested in finding out more or learning some of these great yoga practices and positions, then have a look at my about me page and browse my classes and workshops at www.yogaCircle.co.uk I am a qualified yoga teacher, trained by The International Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centres, a yoga organisation recognised worldwide.