Yin Yoga is a great way to feel relaxed, revitalized, and centred. It can be a powerful tool for sleep and even improve your overall health by alleviating insomnia. The practice of Yin Yoga can help you achieve a deeper connection with your body, which can aid in falling asleep quickly and staying asleep. Here are six reasons why I think it’s important to learn about Yin Yoga and how it helped my insomnia.
What is Yin Yoga?
Yin Yoga is a form of Yoga that focuses on stretching and holding postures for a longer period of time. It is a great method for reducing muscle tension, increasing joint mobility, and fostering deep relaxation.
In Yin Yoga, you use your body’s weight to pressure the joints and connective tissue in the hips, spine, and shoulders. This helps to release tension from those areas and can be therapeutic for chronic pain.
Yin yoga is great for reducing insomnia because it increases your connection with your body. The deeper connection will help you unwind before bedtime and make you feel more relaxed overall.
Yin Yoga For Insomnia
I’ve always struggled with sleep. It’s been a problem I always have and for a while believed that I always would. Lack of sleep eventually turned into full-blown insomnia and it was taking over my life. I dealt with it for years and often thought to myself that my days were numbered. I was up for hours at night, tossing and turning in bed, with many nights achieving a maximum of 20 to 30 minutes, if I was lucky.
It wasn’t just the lack of sleep that was affecting me though; I found that my brain wasn’t working as well as it should have either. My productivity levels were low, and everything seemed to take more effort than usual. It didn’t take long before the stress took its toll on me, too. My anxiety level skyrocketed, and I couldn’t function any longer. I felt like my whole world was collapsing beneath me—and it led me to search for help outside of traditional medicine.
I tried different sleeping pills to no avail—the old me would have popped one of those bad boys before bed and gone straight to sleep. But I knew the effects weren’t good for me, so I needed a better solution. The answer to my problems was as clear as day to me after I discovered Yin Yoga. It helped me feel relaxed before bedtime more quickly than ever before by getting into areas of tension that are often overlooked during more active yoga sessions. The stillness involved in Yin Yoga was exactly what I needed after feeling restless for so long––it gave me a sense of peace that helped me fall asleep faster than ever before!
It helped me fall asleep quickly and stay asleep better than any other exercise or strategy I had tried before. And it’s all about the benefits of stretching your body while you’re lying down too! Yin Yoga is an exercise that focuses on elongating the muscles by holding poses for longer periods of time (holding each pose can last five minutes). It’s less intense than other forms of yoga like Vinyasa, which means it’s easier to keep your mind clear while doing it at night before bedtime.
Additionally, Yin Yoga is also great because it addresses back pain—which can be another factor for insomnia due to discomfort. By focusing on the hips, hamstrings, hip flexors, quads, glutes, back muscles, shoulders, arms, abs and chest muscles with Yin Yoga
5 reasons Yin Yoga Helps with insomnia:
1. Yin/Yang; finding Balance.
Our daily lives are very fast paced these days. There is a lot more information and stimulation than ever before, with an expectation for us to work harder, faster and stronger. This even applies when we exercise. The popularity of “power” yoga practices has really increased in the recent past as well- what’s wrong with that? What we’re saying is this: every aspect of life requires balance. When you try too hard or overwork yourself it can lead to burnout, which yin yoga helps alleviate through its meditative nature – by slowing down your body but helping restore energy in your mind and soul as well!
2. Yin Yoga Relieves pain and tension from your connective tissue and joints
Yin yoga is a style of yoga that focuses on holding poses for long periods to get past the surface muscles and give tissues and joints some much needed relief and love. In order to allow our body release tension, we hold these poses for more time than normal stretches would take. The longer-lasting poses can also help us stretch out our bodies with less intensity, which helps relax those muscles in addition to allowing them space from one another so they don’t become too tight or contracted. We must keep what lies below as well – especially because everything in the body works together to function at an optimal level.
3. Yin yoga helps to reduce anxiety.
As we sit still, slow down and confront our emotions with patience and compassion, we learn valuable tools to reduce anxiety. In reality, there is nothing to be anxious about; it’s just a practice that gradually allows us start feeling at peace in even the most difficult moments of life. Reducing anxiety dramatically helps with insomnia, as the mind slows down and anxious emotions are dealt with before your head hits the pillow.
4. Yin Yoga helps you ‘let go’
If you are having a hard time letting go of something that keeps your mind occupied, or if an injury prevents you from falling asleep, Yin yoga helps melt these tensions over time with a gradual approach. Yin yoga is about letting go of whatever doesn’t serve you at the highest level. Yin yoga allows you to fall into gravity with moments of cradling and/or comfort to better help you reach a place of peace and safety. When you feel safe, closing your eyes at night becomes less intimidating.
5. It quiets the nervous system and alleviates stress.
The autonomic nervous system is made up of two parts: the sympathetic (fight or flight) and parasympathetic (rest and digest). Yin Yoga stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system, which in turn slows breathing down, heart rate, lowers stress levels and relaxes muscles. It provides many health benefits because it helps a person sleep more soundly.
This NCBI article points to the effectiveness of mind-body therapies in treating insomnia and promoting better sleep. Yin yoga is one of the most effective styles of yoga for increasing relaxation and calmness; next to meditation.
The Benefits of Yin Yoga
Yin Yoga is a slow, meditative style of yoga that focuses on the poses and the deeper connective tissues of the body. It has been proven to provide excellent benefits for those with insomnia, as it allows your body to relax and release tension.
I’ve had trouble sleeping for as long as I can remember. I’ve tried everything from counting sheep to taking warm baths before bed, but nothing was helping me sleep. That is, until I found Yin Yoga which has been an amazing addition to my nightly routine! Yin Yoga differs from other styles of yoga in that it’s a more passive practice where you’re working to hold a pose for a longer period of time. This can help you feel more grounded and connected with your body which may improve sleep quality.
Yin yoga can help you to fall asleep quicker and sleep longer at night. It also helps to go back to sleep after waking up in the middle of the night, as well as reducing symptoms associated with insomnia.
In addition to improving my sleep, Yin Yoga has helped me become more grounded during the day by making me more aware of my breath and presence in my body.
How To Practice Yin Yoga At Home
When you’re trying to learn how to practice Yin Yoga at home, it’s important to make sure you have a few things. You’ll need a mat, a blanket, and some blocks or other props.
As you lie down on the mat, use your blanket as a pillow. Place your props underneath your body so you’ll be able to hold yourself up during the various exercises.
You’ll start by lying face down and placing your hands and feet close together and parallel with each other. Make sure that you’re facing away from the floor and towards the ceiling. Your legs should be relaxed, almost as if they were dangling in the air. Place your hands just below your rib cage and gently push into the ground as you lengthen the sides of your body away from each other as well as up towards the ceiling. Think of this as opening up like an envelope until you feel a stretch in your back muscles. Hold this for about three seconds before releasing and repeating ten times.
Conclusion
Yin Yoga is a practice rooted in the philosophy of Buddhism and Taoism. It maximizes the benefits of the poses by staying in them for longer periods of time. Yin Yoga is designed to release tension and stress from the deepest layers of muscle and tissue, releasing toxins and refreshing the whole system.
Rather than focusing on moving through a series of poses, Yin Yoga focuses on stillness and releasing tension. Yin Yoga is a natural way to relax and destress.
