269 Reasons Your Teaching & Consultation Just Got Better: Rigorous, evidence-based sleep protocols and yoga teacher support.
Practical, carefully contextualized sleep protocols and yoga teaching tools backed by 269 references.
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Contents
Teacher & Provider Support
Sleep Physiology, Sleep Issues, Sleep Protocols & Therapies
Research on Yoga’s Impact
How Yoga Promotes Better Sleep
Yoga & Sleep
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Teacher & Provider Support
I recently shared our new Science of Sleep Workshop Blueprint. I’ve been prioritizing the preparation of deep-dive blueprints because I want you to feel exceptionally prepared and inspired to help others navigate important issues.
But workshops are just one way to equip your students and clients with knowledge, resources, and somatic practices that are immediately impactful. Even if workshops aren’t your focus at the moment, you have access to rigorous, practical daily-use tools.
We’ve recently expanded our sleep library — drawing from more than 250 references. True to our standard, this teacher and provider support is rigorously evidence-based, carefully contextualized and eminently practical. Here are a few excerpts to give you a clear picture of what’s available.
Sleep Physiology, Sleep Issues, Sleep Protocols & Therapies
Here’s an overview of the structure:
Sleep Physiology & Health Impacts — Understand the core physiology of sleep and how sleep quality serves as a primary driver of physical, mental, and emotional well-being — and how its disruption contributes to disease.
Sleep Issues — Explore the root causes of sleep issues and examine characteristics of, and responses for, sleep conditions including nocturnal leg cramps, Restless Legs Syndrome (RLS), and sleep apnea.
Sleep Protocols & Therapies — Examine sleep protocols and evidence-based interventions to induce high-quality sleep, including light management, herbs, supplements, and foods, music, acupuncture, and other therapies.
Yoga & Sleep — Review the clinical evidence supporting yoga and meditation for sleep; analyze the underlying physiological mechanisms of yoga’s success; and explore specific postures, sequencing, breathwork, and meditation protocols to optimize sleep.
Sleeping Pills & Sedatives —Evidence of harm from sleep drugs include Ambien, Anxiolytics, Belsomra, Benzodiazepines, Hypnotics, Suvorexant, Tranquilizers, Z-Drugs, Zaleplon, Zolpidem, and Zopiclone.
Research on Yoga’s Impact
See Research on the Impact of Yoga for summaries and links to research demonstrating these outcomes:
Mindfulness meditation improved sleep for older adults experiencing sleep issues (2015)
Mindfulness meditation was successful for the treatment of insomnia, providing “durable results” (2015)
Statistically superior sleep results among yoga groups (2013)
After 6 months of yoga, sleep quality, depression, and health status of older adults were all improved (2009)
Significant decrease in the time taken to fall asleep, an increase in the total number of hours slept, and in the feeling of being rested in the morning among elderly, compared to Ayurveda group and control group (2005)
Among more than 1,800 women with sleep problems, yoga groups showed a significant improvement in sleep (2020)
Yoga improved self-reports of sleep quality, plus measurable markers of slow-wave sleep, REM and awakenings (2009)
Among 4,500 participants, mind-body therapies (meditation, tai chi qigong, and yoga) resulted in statistically significant improvement in sleep quality and reduction in insomnia severity (2019)
Meditative movement (tai chi, qi gong, and yoga) improved sleep quality in a variety of patient populations (2016)
Yoga improved sleep in cancer survivors (2014)
Tibetan Yoga intervention vs stretching or usual care: Better sleep quality, both short and long-term, among breast cancer patients receiving chemotherapy (2017)
8 weeks of web-based Hatha Yoga had beneficial effect on the mental health and quality of sleep in older adults (2022)
Moderate-intensity exercise or stretching improved sleep quality among sedentary, overweight, and postmenopausal women (2003)
Overweight adults engaging in resistance training and/or aerobic exercise increased their sleep time, with the greatest gains from resistance training (2003)
Mindfulness practices and cognitive behavioral therapy were equally effective for insomnia (2018)
Practicing twice-weekly yoga improved symptoms of restless leg syndrome (2013)
How Yoga Promotes Better Sleep
Overview
While the scientific evidence firmly establishes yoga as a powerful tool for improving sleep quality, the exact mechanisms are not entirely clear. We can surmise that the following mechanisms play a central role:
Physiological Impacts, Generally
Relaxation: Yoga helps accomplish two keys of sleep: being physically relaxed and being mentally relaxed.
Nervous System Balance: Chronic stress (or an imbalance between sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system activation) tends to lead to sleep issues. Yoga promotes nervous system balance by invoking the relaxation response. See more: Why Yoga Works.
Energetic Impacts, Generally
Energetic Balance: Yoga can help to balance yin and yang energies in the body.
Relief from Energetic Constriction: When engaged in yoga practice, students may become aware of a felt sense of blockages to their energy flow and a sense of the blockages being alleviated. See more: Energy & Subtle Body Anatomy
Mechanisms of Specific Techniques
Mindfulness: Mindfulness has proven successful with insomnia as described in research discussed here, here, here and here. The reasons for its beneficial impact appear to be related to reducing arousal [source], releasing judgment of being awake —which reduces stress [source] — and lessening mind-wandering [source].
Breathwork: In addition to the significant impacts of conscious breathing and other breathwork on sleep quality, it may be particularly important for sleep apnea. This is likely due in part to the fact that sleep apnea is a structural issue (involving muscles that relax and collapse) and some breathwork conditions these tissues. [source and source and source]
Passive Inversions, Forward Bends: In addition to the reasons provided here for yoga’s physiological and muscular impacts that result in stress relief, there is a hypothesis related to passive inversions and forward bends that endeavors to explain how these poses in particular contribute to down-regulating the nervous system. (See The Baroreceptor Reflex & Yoga in the full lesson for more detail.)
Readings & References
Nervous System Balance is Key to Sleep
When a person is excited or nervous, the sympathetic nervous system will become active, causing blood pressure and heart rate to increase, and gastrointestinal peristalsis to stop. When a person is relaxed or at rest, the parasympathetic nervous system will become active, blood pressure and heart rate will slow down, and resumption of gastrointestinal motility. A balance between these two systems allows people to be active when they should be and to rest when they need to, thereby maintaining the normal functions of the body. Once there is a problem with the autonomic nervous system, it can cause various symptoms throughout the body. In addition to insomnia and waking prematurely, there may also be signs of fear, palpitations, chest tightness, breathlessness, dizziness, and tinnitus, among others. – Amber Yang & JoJoNovaes, The Epoch Times link
Yoga Reduces Hyperarousal (Fight or Flight)
Sleep disturbances are often caused by hyperarousal, which can result from running thoughts or a mind that “won’t turn off.” Yoga can help reduce arousal, thereby increasing the chances of a good night’s sleep. We can also manage the hyperarousal that accompanies insomnia by tailoring our daily routines in order to expend excess energy during the day, and invoke a calming energy in the evening, and we can make yoga a part of these routines. – Kayla Kurin, Yoga International link
Conscious Breathing Improves Sleep Quality Among Insomniacs
There is autonomic dysfunction among insomniacs, especially in relation to vagal activity; however, this decreased vagal activity can be facilitated by practicing slow, paced breathing, thereby improving sleep quality. – H.J. Tsai et al, Psychophysiology link
Why Mindfulness Meditation Helps
Ten percent of American adults struggle with chronic insomnia and 30% report occasional or short-term insomnia. Research finds you can remain consciously aware even while your brain and body are sleeping. Insomniacs who report being awake even when their brain wave patterns indicate they’re sleeping have increased activity in brain areas associated with conscious awareness during the dreamless phase of sleep. If you struggle with insomnia and frequently feel you’ve not slept a wink, processes involved in reducing your conscious awareness during sleep may be impaired. Practicing mindfulness meditation is thought to target these processes and may help improve your sleep experience. – Dr. Joseph Mercola, Many Insomniacs Remain Conscious During Sleep link
Balances Yin & Yang Energies
One very common symptom of imbalance between yin and yang is insomnia or poor sleep, which is something you are likely to experience when you have too much yang energy or too little yin energy… Not being able to sleep is considered an imbalance in Chinese medicine, which addresses the energy meridians and seeks to balance the body’s energy by tonifying or unblocking your qi. Acupuncture is one approach to this, in which needles are placed in specific points on meridians to balance energy excesses or deficiencies. Yin Yoga is largely based on the same principle. It seeks to address energy along the meridians, which are believed to be situated in our connective tissue. These not-too-intense, longer-held stretches bring profound release and physical benefits [and provide a] release that allows blocked energy to circulate. – Josh Summers, Yoga Journal link
Why & How Yoga Promotes Sleep
Stretching activates the parasympathetic nervous system, which helps slow the heart rate, cue the muscles to release, and quiet the mind. And intentional breathing calms the mind and body. When you slow your breath, it becomes physiologically impossible to remain in a state of anxiety or agitation. (You heard that right: physiologically impossible.) – Jenessa Connor, Yoga Journal link
Cools the Body
It’s usually easier to fall asleep in a cooler room than a hot one… you might stick your feet out from under the blanket if you are feeling too warm. Exposing your extremities to open-air helps cool you down… My trick for falling asleep in a room that’s too warm is to dip my feet into cold water and then leave them slightly wet as I climb back into bed. As water evaporates from the feet, it helps to cool you down… The yoga tradition, of course, has its tricks for cooling the body. You can try Shitali breath, which involves breathing in through a rolled tongue, or its cousin Sitkari, which involves breathing in through your teeth. Both of those techniques are meant to cool you down. If you also lengthen your exhalation when you practice those, it will also help to calm your nervous system. Another general suggestion that concerns body temperature comes from the yogic ideas of Ida and Pingala… Breathing through the left nostril is supposed to stimulate the lunar channel and cool the body. – Olga Kabel, YogaUOnline link
Yoga & Sleep
A General Approach to Optimizing for Sleep Quality
To effectively adapt yoga techniques for sleep issues, please begin with Yoga Adaptation Principles for a foundation.
As yoga therapist Olga Kabel suggests here, an effective protocol requires understanding the unique manifestation of a student’s sleep struggles before choosing specific practices. Yoga therapists and other qualified clinicians will ask questions to get an idea of how the sleep issues are manifesting and to get a sense for potential causal factors.
While yoga teachers are not trained to create a customized protocol for individual students to address particular issues, they can consider common issues and set class and workshop objectives to be responsive to sleep-related considerations.
Anyone seeking to optimize sleep will benefit from making informed, conscious lifestyle choices. See Sleep Protocols & Therapies for an extensive and organized curation of evidence-based techniques.
When choosing poses, it’s wise to consider the common physical and energetic effects of each asana category (e.g. standing poses, backbends, forward bends, Restorative, Yin, etc.). However, how a pose is practiced is arguably just as relevant — if not more so — than the specific posture itself.
When choosing stretches and poses for practicing later in the day or just before bedtime, consider these suggestions:
Practice with gentle awareness.
Move slowly.
Synchronize movements with the breath.
Prioritize comfort as opposed to striving.
Practice gentle stretches.
Consider “lingering for five to 10 long, slow breaths in each pose. The idea is to stretch the muscles sufficiently and also slow your nervous system sufficiently so you can release tension and settle into sleep.” [Yoga with Kassandra]
See below for specific considerations related to the following:
Poses
13+ Sequences
Breathing Techniques
Meditation, Visualization
Chanting
Poses
Late in the Day, Minimize These
To encourage sleep, it’s typically advised to minimize exhilarating practices late in the day.
Minimize exhilarating practices including stimulating breath practices such as Kapalabhati
Minimize deep backbends
Minimize Power Yoga, Vinyasa Flow or strong versions of Surya Namaskar
Minimize “over-enthusiastic” Ujjayi [Lisa Sanfilippo]
Minimize “overteaching” or “creating dependence on your cues” [Lisa Sanfilippo]
However, when there is excess tension or nervous anxiety, the practitioner may need to first begin with vigorous or stimulating practices to “burn off” excess energy and tension, after which the student will be more comfortable slowing movement down. See more: Sequencing & Pacing to Balance Energy
Poses with many backbends, inversions, or rigorous flows can boost your energy levels, making it harder to fall asleep. For example, positions like urdhva dhanurasana (upward bow or wheel pose) or adho mukha vrksasana (handstand) are best avoided right before bed. – Chris Mosunic PhD link
Stretches & Poses for Consideration
Consider stretches that help to prepare the body for sleep and poses that support the relaxation response. Some considerations include:
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