If you don’t always get a good night’s rest, there are chances that you just may well be aging faster than usual. You may not exactly feel at the top of the world all the time, and your thinking may well be confused and muddled. Once we sleep, our body repairs on a cellular level and removes toxins. Therefore, it is necessary to sleep for a minimum of seven to nine hours on a regular basis at night.
If you are unable to catch onto a good amount of quality sleep, yoga can help. Regular practice of yoga is understood to assist alleviate several ailments, including insomnia and abnormal sleeping habits. We have curated a list of yoga on the bed you can do to get good sleep.
Child’s Pose (Balasana)
Rest your chest and belly on one or two stacked pillows with knees apart and big toes touching. Rest an ear on the pillow, eyes closed, and jaw and belly relaxed. Your arms can rest on the edges of the pillow or underneath. Focus your attention on the nostrils and revel in the feeling of breath flowing in and out.
Supported Half Frog Pose (Ardha Bhekasana)
Lie on your belly, while you can put pillows under the belly optionally. Extend one leg bent on the side and bend it at a 90-degree angle together, with your knee level with your hip. Invite the alternative leg to straighten and extend behind you. Invite your head to show and rest within the direction of your bent leg. Relax your belly, eyes, and jaw. Focus your attention on the nostrils and revel in the feeling of breath flowing in and out.
Reclining Bound Angle Pose (Supta Baddha Konasana)
Lie flat on your back. Bring the soles of your feet along with your legs bent. Place a pillow under both thighs and an optional pillow behind your head, folding the pillows if more support is required. Place hands on the stomach. With eyes closed and jaw relaxed, bring your awareness to your hands resting on your belly. Get involved in feeling the rise and fall of your torso with each slow and deep breath- in and out.
Wind-Relieving Pose (Pawanmuktasana)
Lie down flat on your back with an optional pillow behind your head. Straighten and extend one leg long ahead of you and bend the opposite leg, hugging it in toward your side body as if your knee could touch your armpit. Interlace fingers around your shin or behind the knee of your bent leg. With closed eyes and a relaxed jaw, breathe in so as to fill the air in your belly. Stay for as long as you can and then switch sides.
Supported Reclining Twist
Lie flat on your back. Bend both legs at a right angle and allow them to fall to the right. With knees stacked and hips level, you can slide one or two pillows between your thighs. Extend your arms straight out at shoulder level and switch your head to the left. With eyes closed and jaw and belly relaxed, put your mind in feeling the breath flow far into your collarbones. Stay for as long as you would like and then switch sides, twisting to the left and turning head to the right.
Corpse Pose (Savasana)
Allow your body to rest with hands by your sides or on your stomach. You can also place pillows under your upper thighs or behind your knees for more support if desired. With eyes closed and jaw and torso relaxed, feel your breath filling up your belly, expanding your ribs, and flowing up into the chest after breathing in. Exhale by relaxing your chest, ribs, then belly. This breath is termed Dirgha pranayama or a complete breath. Allow this wave-like rhythm to put your mind at ease and help you to sleep.
Benefits of doing yoga on bed
Following are some of the benefits of doing yoga before going to sleep that you might enjoy:
Alleviates insomnia
Practicing yoga regularly can help you to manage symptoms of insomnia. You will be able to go to sleep quicker, sleep for long hours, and return to sleep after waking up at midnight. Research points to the effectiveness of yoga and other mind-body therapies in treating insomnia and promoting better sleep. Additionally to yoga, folks that practiced meditation, tai chi, and qigong experienced improved sleep patterns.
Weight loss
Consistent yoga practice is said to lead towards weight loss and quality sleep. Doing yoga before bed may facilitate you to sleep better, which encompasses a positive effect on weight maintenance and weight loss. It can also lead you to be more mindful of your eating habits.
Improves sleep quality and quality of life
Yoga may be an excellent natural alternative to pharmaceutical sleep aids that are often given to older adults. Research has checked out the long-term effects of practicing yoga in older adults. They found that practicing yoga had a positive effect on the standard of sleep and overall life as compared to the control group, who didn’t see as many benefits.
Promotes relaxation
Yoga may help to place your body in an exceedingly calm state, referred to as the relief response. This is quite the opposite of the fight-or-flight response. Doing calming yoga on the bed may facilitate your relaxation and enter a lower state of arousal. This may cause you to lower your vital signs and lower amounts of cortisol, a stress hormone. A good yoga routine may help to alleviate stress-related concerns like weight gain, anxiety, and insomnia.
The bottom line
Doing yoga on the bed can help you go to sleep faster and for a long time. But it is not the only factor that improves your sleep. Many factors heavily weigh in while you are trying to get those full snooze hours like- bedroom environment, lifestyle, bedtime hygiene, alcohol, caffeine, and nicotine usage, how many naps you have taken midday, etc. The best part is, you can control all these factors yourself by adopting a strict and healthy routine leading up to a healthy lifestyle. For bedroom environment needs, visit Livpure Sleep’s website for products that will aid you to sleep better, like- mattresses, pillows, blackout curtains to stop sunlight from entering your bedroom too early, comforters for chilly nights, etc. While you make this journey to sleep better, let Livpure help you to set up your bed for sleep.
