Can Yoga Help You Sleep Better? 5 Ways Yoga Can Support Better Sleep
There’s a particularly frustrating kind of tiredness where your body feels exhausted but your brain has apparently decided bedtime is the perfect moment to review your entire life.
You get into bed, ready to sleep, and suddenly you’re thinking about tomorrow’s to-do list, something awkward you said three days ago, whether you replied to that email, or what you’re going to make for dinner later in the week.
Sound familiar?
Sleep is complicated, and there isn’t one magic yoga pose that will guarantee a perfect night’s sleep. But yoga can be a really useful tool for helping you make the transition from a busy day into rest.
And importantly, yoga for better sleep doesn’t need to mean doing a full yoga class before bed.
A short period of gentle movement, breathing and relaxation can be enough to help your body and mind start slowing down.
Here are five ways yoga can support better sleep.
1. Yoga can help you shift out of “go mode”
Most of us spend a lot of the day doing.
Working. Travelling. Looking after other people. Answering messages. Making decisions. Scrolling. Planning. Thinking about what needs doing next.
Then we expect ourselves to climb into bed and immediately switch all of that off.
Unsurprisingly, it doesn’t always work.
A gentle evening yoga practice can create a useful transition between daytime activity and bedtime.
That doesn’t mean you need to completely empty your mind or reach some magical state of calm. It simply gives you a period where you deliberately start doing less.
You might move more slowly, focus on your breathing, reduce external distractions and spend a few minutes paying attention to how your body actually feels.
Think of it as creating a bit of space between doing and sleeping.
2. Gentle movement can help release physical tension
Sometimes we don’t realise how much tension we’re carrying until we finally stop.
Shoulders creeping towards the ears. A clenched jaw. Tight hips. A stiff lower back after sitting for much of the day.
None of that necessarily stops us sleeping, but being physically uncomfortable can make it harder to settle.
Gentle yoga can help you notice where you’re holding tension and give those areas a chance to move and soften before you get into bed.
It can be good to stretch out the big muscle groups to help you ease tension and aid physical relaxation which can be a good tool for inducing sleep.
You might like to try thing like:
easy spinal movements
gentle twists
hip stretches
supported forward folds
lying stretches
legs up the wall
Legs up the wall is a great pose for gently stretching the hamstrings and helping you ease tension before bed.
The aim isn’t to stretch as deeply as possible or improve your flexibility.
In fact, bedtime probably isn’t the moment for your most ambitious yoga practice.
You’re simply looking for movements that feel comfortable and help your body feel a little less tight.
3. Breathing practices can help slow things down
Your breath can be one of the simplest tools to use as part of a bedtime routine because you don’t need any equipment or even much space.
You also don’t need to take enormous “deep breaths”.
For some people, trying to breathe deeply can actually feel uncomfortable or like another thing they’re trying to get right.
Instead, start by simply noticing your natural breathing.
Then, if it feels comfortable, gradually allow the breath to become a little slower.
You might try making the exhale slightly longer than the inhale.
For example:
Inhale for a count of 4.
Exhale for a count of 6.
There’s nothing particularly magical about those numbers, and you don’t need to force yourself to stick to them.
The important part is that the breathing feels easy.
A few minutes of slower, comfortable breathing can help signal that you’re no longer rushing through the day.
4. Yoga can give a busy mind somewhere to go
One of the reasons bedtime can feel difficult is that there suddenly isn’t much competing for your attention.
During the day, your brain has plenty to focus on.
At night, the lights go off and all those unfinished thoughts suddenly become much louder.
Yoga can help because instead of trying to force yourself to “stop thinking”, you give your attention something simple to come back to.
That might be:
the feeling of your breath
sensations in different parts of your body
counting breaths
repeating a simple movement
listening to a guided relaxation
This is also where practices such as Yoga Nidra can be useful.
Yoga Nidra is a guided relaxation practice, usually done lying down, where you’re invited to move your awareness around the body, notice your breathing and follow different relaxation techniques.
Yoga nidra can be a great practice to calm a busy mind, and eye pillows are optional!
You don’t need to concentrate perfectly.
If your mind wanders, you simply notice and come back to the practice.
And yes, if you fall asleep during it, that’s not exactly a disaster if sleep was the goal.
5. A regular wind-down routine can become a useful sleep cue
One of the most helpful things about bedtime yoga may not be any individual pose at all.
It’s the routine around it.
When you repeat a similar sequence of things in the evening, those activities can start to become part of the transition towards sleep.
That doesn’t mean creating an elaborate two-hour evening routine involving twelve different wellness products.
Keep it realistic.
Something as simple as:
dim the lights → put your phone down → 10 minutes of gentle yoga → a few minutes of breathing or relaxation → bed
can be enough.
And consistency matters more than length.
A 10-minute routine you actually do several times a week is likely to be much more useful than a perfect hour-long practice you never have time for.
What kind of yoga is best before bed?
There isn’t one specific style of yoga everyone needs to do before bed.
Generally, though, an evening practice should leave you feeling less stimulated, not more.
That might mean choosing:
slower movement
comfortable stretches
supported poses
gentle mobility
breathing practices
relaxation
Yoga Nidra
A strong yoga class can still be brilliant for you - just perhaps not at 10pm if you know it leaves you feeling wide awake.
The best bedtime practice is the one that helps you wind down.
How long before bed should you do yoga?
Again, there isn’t one perfect answer.
Some people love doing yoga immediately before climbing into bed.
Others prefer to practise earlier in the evening and then continue winding down afterwards.
Experiment a little.
If practising right before bed feels relaxing, great.
If it leaves you feeling alert, move it earlier.
You’re looking for a routine that fits naturally into your evening rather than another rule you need to follow perfectly.
Does bedtime yoga need to be long?
Absolutely not.
Even five or ten minutes can be worthwhile.
You might do a couple of gentle stretches followed by some slower breathing.
You might spend ten minutes with your legs up the wall.
You might skip the movement entirely and listen to a short Yoga Nidra.
The biggest barrier to most routines is making them too complicated.
If better sleep is the goal, make your bedtime yoga practice easy enough that you’ll actually do it.
Yoga is one part of the picture
Yoga can help create better conditions for sleep, but it isn’t a cure-all.
Your overall sleep routine matters too.
Things such as caffeine, alcohol, stress, screen use, light exposure, your sleep environment and regular sleep and wake times can all play a part.
If you’re regularly struggling with sleep or experiencing persistent insomnia, it’s worth speaking to an appropriate healthcare professional rather than relying on yoga alone.
But as part of a wider evening routine, yoga can be a simple and practical way to help yourself slow down.
You’re not trying to force yourself to sleep.
You’re simply giving your body and mind a little more time to arrive there.
Want to build your own bedtime yoga routine?
This November, Bedtime Yoga is our theme at Worker Bee Yoga.
Across the month, we’ll be exploring gentle movement, breathing, relaxation and Yoga Nidra to help you create simple practices you can use as part of your own evening wind-down.
The Bedtime Yoga Challenge starts on Monday 2 November.
