Restorative Yoga for Sleep
Have you tried all the best sleep hygiene advice but you’re still having issues?
Some people can do all the right things — being conscious about light exposure, eating windows, bedtime routines — and still have difficulty falling or staying asleep.
For us to fall asleep, our mind-body system has to feel safe. That means that, from all the data it is gathering, our nervous system determines that it’s time for rest.
In yoga therapy, we address each layer of a person when dealing with issues like sleep. We want to know:
Can your muscles relaxed?
Can your nervous system down-regulate?
Are you mentally prepared for rest?
Can you find emotional regulation?
Do you feel generally content, fulfilled, or on-purpose?
Your personalised remedial programme will depend on which of these considerations may be causing issues for you. For the latter, more subtle questions that delve into your inner experience, psychotherapy or Somatic Coaching will help you better understand and process the mental, emotional and/or spiritual patterns.
If your issues are more musculoskeletal and/or physiological, there are some practices that could help improve your sleep right away, and help rewire your mind-body system over time.
Restorative Yoga
Restorative yoga is all about slowing down and letting go. Learning how to unwind and surrender is key to letting yourself sleep.
As opposed to more active forms of yoga, restorative yoga is all about taking strain off the body, using props to help relieve mechanical stress, and giving your tissues the opportunity to breathe a sigh of relief.
But this can be easier said than done. For a stressed system, relaxing can feel unsettling, even when this clear invitation to let go is given. So, in restorative yoga we work with calming breathwork and imagery to help convince these trigger-happy muscles let go.
For instance, we may work with a breath pattern with extended exhales, which sends feedback to the nervous system that there is no threat to deal with.
We may work also with relaxing visualisation, like floating in water or melting, to help hypnotise the mind into calm state.
Positions or gentle movements that we take in restorative yoga further help the nervous system down-regulate by creating spaciousness in our joints. This may come in the form of very gentle stretch, but without the intention of trying to increase flexibility; these stretches and joint articulations are more about creating space for tight tissues to ‘breathe’ and for potentially stagnant fluids to flow. There’s also a reflex that elicits the ‘rest & digest’ (parasympathetic) branch of the nervous system when a stretch is held for 90 seconds or more.
How will restorative yoga help me sleep?
Carving out time for deliberate practice of restorative yoga will give you the opportunity to train these key elements of down-regulation into your mind-body system.
Especially when you’re part of a class of practitioners, guided by a trusted teacher, you’ll gradually find pathways to this relaxed state as your system learns that it’s safe to let go.
With this embodied skill of shifting your physiology, relaxing your muscles, slowing your breath and releasing habitual thought patterns, your system will be more prepared for sleep.
“I’ve tried yoga and I just couldn’t relax”
Know that it is normal for some people to find it challenging to let go at first. Some people have been craving the permission to let go and easily slip into this relaxed state when they come to class, but other systems are so well programmed to be constantly ‘on’.
Just like building muscles, reprogramming your mind-body system for relaxation takes repetitions. If you try to relax and find it challenging, noticing the thought patterns and the bodily restlessness can help you discover the previously unconscious obstacles to your ability to sleep. So, even though it can be frustrating at first, meeting your edge can be exactly what you need to start making these shifts.
“I can relax when I’m in yoga class, but once I’m at home the old patterns return”
There’s yoga ‘on the mat’ and ‘off the mat’. Coming to class is a way for you to learn new techniques and to experience a deep-dive into an altered state of consciousness, in a safe place, with a specific intention, being guided by a trusted teacher.
Taking the learnings out into the world is a different experience. We will meet all our old triggers and be pulled by all our old habits. But once you’ve dived deep into a state of ease — especially when you’ve revisited that state many times — your system is more primed to find this state. The neurological pathway is strengthened every time you dive in; your system gets to know this inner landscape.
Like a martial art, you may perfect your technique in training, but to be a master you must battle-test what you have learned. As you bump up against your inner and outer obstacles, you’ll learn how to self-regulate in the moment of being triggered or brought off-centre.
Interested in restorative yoga?
I run Finding Flow sessions online, which is a somatic restorative practice that cultivates fluid movement for a more easeful state of mind and body. I weave together concepts from restorative yoga, somatics and yoga therapy, which you can learn more about through the link below.
Alternatively, you might prefer a more personalised approach to restorative yoga for the purposes of stress management or sleep issues. Find out more about my private yoga programmes through the link below.
