Yoga is an ancient practice that improves flexibility and muscle strength, helps you to connect with your breathing, and can assist in reducing stress. However, it can also have an influence on your sleep. Insomnia is one of the most commonplace sleep disorders nowadays and can have long-lasting effects on sufferers, particularly when it is induced by stress in your daily life. In this article, we will be exploring how yoga could be an effective treatment for insomnia.
What Is Insomnia?
While a lot of people struggle with falling asleep, particularly as many of us spend large portions of our day on screens that inhibit our ability to sleep peacefully, insomnia is a much more intense disorder. Sleep problems are considered to be insomnia when you struggle to sleep consistently over time. Acute insomnia can affect someone for a single night or for a few weeks, but it is considered chronic when you consistently struggle with sleep for multiple nights in a single week for several months in a row. The problems that arise from insomnia are not limited to having a bad night sleep and feeling a bit tired the following day. It can lead to increased irritability, problems with memory and concentration, fatigue, risks of health problems including obesity and high blood pressure, and anxiety.
Insomnia may be caused by a number of different problems, but stress can often be a trigger. It can be hard to break a cycle of insomnia before it becomes a bigger problem, but one thing that might help is yoga.
How Yoga Can Help
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Mindfulness and Breath
Yoga is largely based around breathing and connecting to your body. The practice and art of yoga is all about being mindful of your breath and focusing on providing oxygen to your muscles as you move. Through regular yoga practice, you can begin to regulate your breathing and improve your ability to relax your body. This will assist you with connecting to your physical body and mental stress, and enter a relaxed state that will improve your ability to go to sleep.
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Release Tension
Daily yoga workouts will allow you to release the tension that you build up throughout the day. By stretching your spine and neck, where we often hold excess stress, you will go to bed with less stress.
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Improving General Health
As mentioned above, insomnia can lead to health problems in the future and, though yoga is often seen as just stretching, it is a workout. By getting your body moving and increasing your activity, you are reducing your risk of health problems. Aside from future health benefits, any kind of exercise will tire your body accordingly and may help to increase your ability to sleep.
In conclusion, while insomnia can be a debilitating problem that can influence not just your ability to fall asleep but your long term health, yoga is an easy way to improve symptoms. Yoga is accessible for all fitness levels and can easily be done in the comfort of your own home, so before you reach for the sleeping pills try a short yoga routine instead for a natural and healthy way to improve your quality of sleep.
Contact Trifocus Fitness Academy
As you are able to see from the above article, yoga has a fortune of benefits which don’t include just having a great physique. If you would to learn more about these – and become a yoga instructor yourself – then you really need to do our Yoga Instructor Course. Find out more here.
