Yoga to Solve Your Sleeping Problems

By Riky Lim

Every second echoes in heartbeat thumps and staccato white-water rivers of thoughts during sleepless, restless nights. Even keeping eyes closed is a struggle. Insomnia affects a lot of people.

There are medications, diets and habits to help a person sleep through the night. Sometimes, it just isn't enough. If you have tried prescriptions, drinking alcohol before bed, homeopathic remedies, and all the other ways people try to sleep, and there is still no blissful vacation in dreamland, maybe it's time to change the way you think about sleeping.

Sometimes, we just have to take the struggle out of trying to sleep. Add yoga to your bedtime routine. Not the yoga of human pretzels and head stand. This is soft, relaxing, soothing yoga. In bedtime routines, yoga slows down the body and mind by focusing on the breath and the release of tensions in the body and brain.

        Read also : Yoga Helps You To Lower Your Stress Level

Guide your body to sleep; do not keep trying to force it. Use yoga to relax the body and mind, and get good sleep.

It is so easy to start doing. Forget teachers, classes and even a yoga mat. Find a comfy place, even your bed. Start doing a yoga session by sitting with your legs folded against each other in front of you. Observe your breath, feel the tension that has collected in the muscles.

Sync the mind and the body. Imagine your bum spreading on the floor like goo. Straighten your spine. Hold your head up high. Breathe in long, deep breaths. Push your belly out. Relax your rib cage. Expand your chest outwards, but try not to lift it up into your throat. This pose is safe and supportive, which tricks your body into relaxing.

Sometimes, the restless leg syndrome kicks in. Keep breathing. Your body gets part way to feeling amazing and wants to move, to revel in this new relaxation. Let it do what it wants.

Stretch forward in forward folds. Stretch to the sides. Stretch up. Stretch your legs forward and sideways. Breathe with every motion. Get deeply focused on making this easy. Make an effort to do less. If this sitting down yoga takes twenty minutes and at the end, you feel so sleepy, you almost fall asleep right there, score. Goal accomplished.

Your breath is really the key to yoga guiding your body and mind into deep, sweet sleep. As you get more relaxed, your body and mind may start to fight it. The thoughts start flying faster than ever. Your breathing oxygenate the blood, which is a good thing, for your lungs and heart and brain.

However, all the bad habits that are keeping you from releasing, relaxing and sleeping will want to use that extra oxygen to reinforce their agenda. Their agenda is to not let you sleep. Your body is telling you it wants action. So let it have some action.

This is the point when you can start moving into a flow of poses such as cat and cow, child's pose, and pigeon. These deceptively simple poses will massage the spine, encourage deeper breathing and give a deep stretch to the hips.

Control your movements and your breathing. Let your entire attention focus like a laser on what really matters in this moment; your comfort, your softness, your peace.
Isn't that nice? Now we are moving lightly, satisfying that restless leg syndrome.

Releasing are all those tight muscles which contribute to that restless leg feeling.

In a daytime yoga routine, you would move onto sun salutations to build strength and warmth so that you can have an energetic and productive day, but this is bedtime. Move onto the back. Let the spine, shoulders, rib cage and everything else spread wide on the floor.

Observe what is happening and use this time to find your breath again. The ultimate goal of yoga is to enter shavasana or corpse pose, in which the body lies flat on the back, arms at your sides, legs straight and palms face the ceiling.

This pose is a state of mind as well as a physical state. You may still feel some restlessness after moving to your back, so take your time. Remember, you want the body to want to relax. Follow its instincts and gently guide it into relaxation and sleepiness.

Take a few minutes right now to hug your legs towards your body, stretch them up and do some spinal twists. Stay in these poses for a long period of time, breathe deeper and quiet the mind even further.

Soon, you will find yourself gravitating towards the stillness of corpse pose. Discover yourself there; don't just order your body to do that pose.

Corpse pose is one of the hardest to get really good at. Don't worry about that. It is the easiest pose to get into. Lying flat on your back, with your eyes closed, the breath moving gently in and out of your body, this is peace.

Thoughts still flicker to life in your mind, but they don't have the same importance as they did before you started. If they are needed again, they will return. Corpse pose is about finding complete stillness, about listening to your breath and accepting your heart beat.

Ultimate personal time, it is a pose in which nothing matters, except the absolute comfort of the body lying on a soft surface. Even if there is no sleep coming any time soon, this state of mind will rest you. You can stay suspended here for as long as you like, or slowly get up and crawl into bed.

Yoga is defined by transformation of the self. Traditionally in the west, it has been about twisting into pretzels or being able to do shoulder stands. It turns yoga into a competition which doesn't help put you to sleep.

The sleepy kind transforms your mind as well as your body. It takes away the struggle and clears the path to an easy breezy sleep.

Don't resign to staring at the ceiling shrouded in darkness forever. Not when you can do the simplest poses for a few minutes at bedtime and crawl between the covers ready for dreamland.

For more information go to http://www.moment2sleep.com

Riky Lim is the founder of Moment2Sleep

Article Source: Yoga to Solve Your Sleeping Problems