We all know that exercise is important to our health, but did you know that it can help improve your sleep? Some forms of exercise, like yoga, can even be calming when done right before you crawl into bed. You might want to take a class or two before you start a new bedtime routine, of course, but making it a point to perform yoga before bed can reduce restlessness and help you achieve deeper, more refreshing sleep. Let’s take a look at four of the top benefits to bedtime yoga!
Improved Mindfulness
Being mindful of your thoughts and feelings has been shown to have an impressive number of health benefits. One of the most important of these is an improved ability to manage your emotions and lower stress levels. Because heightened emotions and high levels of stress can lead to poor sleep as well as chaotic days, a better sense of mindfulness is a great way to boost your quality of life. A consistent bedtime yoga routine can help you improve your mindfulness in small, easy steps every day.
Regular Meditation
Meditation has long been known to help improve mental and emotional health in a variety of ways, but you might not be sure how you can work it into your days. A calming yoga routine that you perform every day is a great way to bring peace to both your mind and your body. This can be especially effective at night, too, while you’re unwinding from the day’s activities and preparing to fall into a deep, uninterrupted sleep.
Manage Your Pain
One of the biggest culprits when it comes to loss of sleep is pain. After all, falling asleep tends to be a quiet, calm moment that encourages you to let go of consciousness and relax. If you’re in pain, that’s not likely to happen. Luckily enough, yoga happens to be a great way to manage pain. This is especially true if the pain occurs somewhere you can easily and safely stretch using basic yoga techniques, like in your back. If your back pain keeps you up at night and is keeping you from getting enough quality sleep, maintaining a simple yoga routine before bed might be the answer.
Appreciate Sleep
We might appreciate waking up and feeling rested, but do you ever actually take time to think about the quality of your sleep? Not many of us do. That’s a shame, however, because once we’ve gotten to a place where we pay close attention to how we feel in the morning we can begin to tune into the inherent quality of our sleep. And once we do that, it becomes easier to identify problem areas that negatively impact our rest. Because yoga promotes body mindfulness, you’ll begin to notice how sleep impacts you in ways you didn’t before you started the routine.
Are you ready to improve your sleep and start your yoga routine? We can help! Even if you can’t make it to a class, our carefully crafted DVDs can teach you what you need to know. Or you can check out this exclusive FREE water yoga class on our Facebook page! Check it out here. If you still want more, tune in to our class on JBS.org every morning from 6:30-7:00am.
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