Restorative Yoga: The Next best thing to a Healthy Sleep

Emerging from research of more than two decades, an unequivocal message: Sleep is the single most effective thing we can do to reset our brains and body health. Together with balance diet and exercise, sleep form the holy trinity of health. Through explosive discoveries, we have come to realize that evolution did not make a spectacular blunder in conceiving sleep as sleep dispenses a multitude of health-ensuing benefits.

Within the brain, sleep enriches a diversity of functions, including our ability to learn, memorize, and make logical decisions and choices. It recalibrates our emotional brain circuits, allowing us to navigate next day social and psychological challenges with a cool-headed composure. Even dreaming provides a unique set of benefits to all species fortunate enough to experience it, among these are consoling neurochemical bath that mollifies painful memories and a virtual reality space in which the brain melds past and present knowledge which inspires creativity.

Downstairs in our bodies, sleep restocks the armory of our immune system, preventing infection and warding off all manners of sickness. Sleep reforms the body’s metabolic state by fine-tuning the balance of insulin and circulating glucose. Sleep further regulates our appetite, helping control body weight through healthy food selection rather than rash impulsivity. Adequate sleep maintains a flourishing microbiome within your gut from which we know so much of our nutritional health begins. Sleep is also intimately tied to the fitness of our cardiovascular system, lowering blood pressure while helping keep our hearts in fine condition.

Sadly human beings are the only species that deliberately deprive themselves without legitimate gain, so much so that the Center for Disease Control declared insufficient sleep as a public health epidemic. It is not a coincidence that countries where sleep time has declined most dramatically over the past century such as US, Japan, South Korea and the UK, and several countries in western Europe are also suffering the greatest physical and mental disorder related to insufficient sleep.

Fortunately if you are one of these people who are deprived of adequate sleep for whatever reason, you can join a restorative yoga class which is the closes thing you can get to a good night’s sleep. The biggest benefit of practicing restorative yoga is the opportunity for your nervous system to switch over from the ‘fight or flight’ stress response to the ‘rest and digest’ relaxation response. When restorative yoga is done right, it can facilitate a deeper rest than sleep. What happens is almost the equivalent to REM sleep, but when we sleep, we dream and can experience anxiety. It’s not necessarily always a quality time of rest.

In order to fully relax, we need to feel supported, both physically and mentally. We prop up in restorative yoga, particularly at the joints, to give the body this experience of full support. Another important factor is the presence of the yoga teacher, which offers another level of support. You can book your restorative yoga class here.

Literature:
Walker, M. (2017): Why we sleep. Unlocking the power of sleep and dreams. Scribner: New York
Lasater, J.H. (1995): Relax and renew. Restful yoga for stressful times. Rodmell Press book: Boulder.