We hear a lot about how we should have a morning yoga practice, and morning routines of people in the wellness space almost always include some downward dog time. And a morning yoga practice is wonderful, but for some of us, the snooze button is too tempting, and suddenly we have 10 minutes to get up, dressed and out the door – not too much time left for rolling out the yoga mat or making it to the studio. And that’s okay. The impression might be that an evening or bedtime yoga practice is a bit ‘less than’ – but that’s not true at all! Practicing at night has so many benefits.
Like…
You don’t have to worry about your yoga-induced zen being zapped.
When we go straight from morning yoga into our day, we’re immediately dealing with other peoples’ energy, which can deplete our zen pretty quickly. While it’s amazing to have a morning yoga practice to help us to deal a bit better with that energy, one amazing thing about a nighttime practice is that we get to take that zen with us, straight to bed. Which brings us to…
You’ll sleep WAY better
Bedtime yoga is how I got into yoga in the first place. If you’re dealing with anxiety and having trouble sleeping, practicing yoga before bed can be really helpful. Yoga and deep breathing help us to switch into the parasympathetic nervous system, which is the opposite to the ‘fight or flight’ nervous system mode which so many of us live in. The parasympathetic nervous system is responsible for ‘resting and digesting’ – just the thing we need before bed. And hey, anything’s better than mindlessly scrolling through Instagram in those moments before bedtime.
Your body’s looser
It can be difficult to incorporate everything we want into a morning yoga practice because our muscles are cold, and we have to dedicate a lot more time to warming up, and we maybe can’t go as deep into the practice as we can at night.
It’s like taking an energetic shower
What better way to take the day off than a yoga practice? While an actual shower removes any physical grime we’ve collected over the day, an energetic shower like our yoga practice is more about removing the non-physical grime – stress, negativity, whatever. This is your time to let the rest of the day fall away as you move into your night with presence.
The classes are usually smaller
If you live near a studio and a late evening class suits you, you can benefit from avoiding the ‘rush hour’ before and after work class times. So there’s less opportunity for distraction, and more opportunity to spread your arms as wide as you like when it comes to that reclined twist. Just be careful you don’t completely fall asleep in Savasana 😉
There you have it! Our top 5 benefits of bedtime yoga. Are there any others you can think of? Let us know! And remember that a morning practice does have lots of amazing benefits too, so why not try them both and see what works for you?
