How Yoga Can Help You Get Better Sleep

Yoga can help you with a variety of life goals, including getting better rest and helping you feel a bit more relaxed in your life. Everybody needs to slow down sometimes, and yoga is one of the best ways that you can move your body while also calming the mind. Even if everything can’t entirely be explained away by science and studies, a lot of it can, and yoga has some special and unique qualities that can help you sleep even better at night than you already are.

Yoga can have a variety of benefits for your health, including weight loss if you have that goal, stress reduction, and increased flexibility. These can all work together to help you find your bliss on the inside and the outside. Here are some of the factors that can help you get better sleep.

1.  Stress Reduction

You might not need anyone special to tell you that yoga can help to reduce stress, but it definitely can. No matter what time of day you choose to practice yoga, it can help reduce the overall stress in your life, which can result in better sleep when the nighttime rolls around. All it takes is a few minutes of practice, or even some meditation to get you on the right track.

2.  Relaxation

Similar to reducing your stress levels, yoga can also help to relax you in the moment, which can be great for getting better-quality sleep. Whether you go about your day a bit more relaxed or you use it to help you get ready for bed at the end of the night, having a more mellow mood in general can help relieve tension, which can help you sleep deeper and better.

3.  Consistency of Routine

No matter what you do, having a consistent routine can help you get better sleep when the nighttime rolls around. When you have a schedule that includes a morning routine, specific tasks, and a bedtime, you can train your body to expect sleep at specific times, which can be a great way to cycle through your sleep with much more consistency.

Having a sleep schedule can be a great way to get many different things on track, and can help you just as much in your waking hours as it can with your sleeping schedule. And you can absolutely use yoga as a part of that.

4.  Reducing Depression and Anxiety

Studies show that doing yoga on a regular basis can help reduce depression and anxiety, and it doesn’t even need to be intense, break-a-sweat power yoga. In fact, even things like meditation and stretching that you can do in bed has the power to help out in the mental health department.

Depression and anxiety often both have a direct link to insomnia, which means that when you reduce depression and anxiety, it often has the added bonus of getting you to sleep faster. Of course, yoga can’t be a cure-all for mental health woes of all kinds, so it’s important to work on other coping mechanisms alongside your yoga practice.

5.  Winding Down

When it comes to the actual nighttime routine, adding yoga as a part of your winding down can be a great way to slow down and tell your body that it’s time for bed. Whether you meditate or bring in some light stretching, there are a lot of ways that yoga can remind you to put the screens away, cool down, and get ready to hit the hay.

The Connection Between Yoga and Sleep

There are so many ways that you can improve the quality of your sleep, and having regular yoga practice is one of them. Whether you go all-out with your mornings or get into some restorative poses before you wind down for the night, yoga can help you find the calm you’re looking for.