Episode 28: What Can Yoga Do For Your Sleep?

Show notes

What can a regular yoga practice do for your sleep? Do different styles of yoga impact sleep differently? And what can you try right now to relax, settle your mind and signal to your body that it’s time to rest? To dive into this topic, we’ve invited renowned yogi, author, and fitness instructor Kristen McGee.

Throughout her career, Kristen has been a pioneer in making yoga more accessible, helping launch the Peloton Yoga Program, starring in over 100 yoga and pilates videos, privately training celebrities, and appearing in countless health focused TV shows and magazines to advocate the benefits of daily yoga.

Episode-related links

Yoga For Sleep To Help Wind Down Before Bed
Yoga Has Surprising Benefits For Older Women Struggling With Insomnia: New Study
These Are the Best Exercises to Do Right Before Bed, According to New Research

Transcript

Dr. Shelby Harris: How are you sleeping? Are you sleeping? I’m Dr. Shelby Harris, Director of Sleep Health at Sleepopolis. And this is Sleep Talking with Dr. Shelby. 

Today we’re talking to fitness instructor and yogi, Kristen McGee, about the benefits regular yoga can have on your sleep. But first, do gardeners get better sleep than the rest of us?

Last June, the Journal of Effective Disorders published a study that analyzed the sleep patterns of over 60,000 adults tracking things like insomnia, daytime sleepiness, and sleep apnea among gardeners and non gardeners. According to the study, the greener your thumb, the better your sleep is likely to be.

This is due to a combination of factors like fresh air, exposure to sunlight, which can help with melatonin production and set that circadian rhythm. It can also reduce stress, fostering mindfulness, and positivity, which can do a lot for your quality of sleep. And people might not realize, at least I didn’t, that gardening is a actually recognized by the CDC as a form of exercise, since it elevates your heart rate and engages several major muscle groups.

So with all this in mind, it’s no surprise to say that a little bit of gardening can make for a great night’s sleep. What do you think of that, Kristen? Are you a gardener? 

Kristen McGee: I want to start gardening more now that you’ve told me all of this. My cousins are big gardeners and they bring me all their little cherry tomatoes and zucchini and cucumbers and it’s just incredible. So I do think that the joy it brings you and the fact that it is a mindful activity when you’re there gardening, you have to be very present and you’re very involved in the movements that you’re doing. So I love it.

DS: If you like Sleep Talking with Dr. Shelby, take a second right now to leave us a five star review on Apple Podcasts. It seems simple, I know, but it helps us reach a lot more people to get them the rest that they deserve. And if you’re tired of hitting the snooze button, hit subscribe instead. A new episode of science-backed sleep tips is available every other Wednesday on YouTube and everywhere you listen to podcasts.

What can a regular yoga practice do for your sleep? Do different styles of yoga impact sleep differently? And for people listening at home, what can you try right now to relax, settle your mind and signal to your body that it’s time to rest? To dive into this topic, we’ve invited renowned yogi, author, and fitness instructor Kristen McGee.

Throughout her career, Kristen has been a pioneer in making yoga more accessible, helping launch the Peloton Yoga Program, starring in over 100 yoga and Pilates videos, privately training celebrities, and appearing in countless health focused TV shows and magazines to advocate the benefits of daily yoga.

Kristen, we are so excited to talk yoga and sleep with you today. Welcome to Sleep Talking with Dr. Shelby. 

KM: Thank you, Dr. Shelby. I’m so happy to be here. 

DS: I’m really excited. So talk us through a little bit of your yoga journey, because I’m sure a lot of people know what you do, but may not know how you got started in it. So how long have you been practicing and what does your practice look like these days with a busy life, busy kids? 

KM: With a busy mom. 

DS: Everything, right.

KM: I grew up in southeastern Idaho. I was a theater major at NYU. So I wanted to leave Idaho and go pursue my acting dreams in the Big Apple. At NYU Tisch School of the Arts, I discovered yoga. I had a woman coming in, leading us with yoga in the morning before we would begin class. And I fell in love with it.

I started taking yoga all the time after every day of school, I would go over to the Jivamukti on 2nd Avenue. When I graduated, I certified to teach yoga to support my acting career. This was in the 90s before yoga was really taking off, or as yoga was starting to take off, and I kept getting more and more involved in the yoga community. I found that that was really where my passion was. 

I still love acting, but I do think that even Peloton, after being at Peloton, it kind of combined the best of both worlds, my theater experience, my on camera experience with my love of movement and yoga and Pilates and meditation. I’ve been practicing and teaching for 30 years.

So it’s been part of me for so many years and it’s something I can’t live without. I move, in some way every day and I meditate twice a day for 20 minutes. 

It’s just become such a part of my life that I get some flow, some breath work, some meditation in every day. 

DS: So let’s talk about yoga with sleep then specifically.

So how would you say the physiologic effects of yoga might improve sleep? Is it concentrating on certain poses? Is it your breathing? Like, what happens in the body that might help improve sleep? Because some people swear by it to help sleep better. 

KM: I think there’s quite a few benefits to practicing yoga as far as sleep is concerned. Very first and foremost is yoga activates the parasympathetic nervous system, which is the rest and digest system. So it’s turning off all of that sympathetic anxious kind of fight or flight energy that we tend to have so often throughout the day, and especially now with everyone being so busy. Yoga turns all of that off, helps us tune inward, helps us connect our minds and our bodies to our breath, relaxes the parasympathetic nervous system. That’s mainly why we breathe in and out through our nose, helps to relax the parasympathetic nervous system, taking those deep, full breaths in through the nose and the deep, full breaths out through the nose, which as you get more comfortable with that kind of deep breathing, I think that’s also helpful with sleep.

DS: Yeah. 

KM: We’re relaxed and we’re able to check in with our breath and we’re getting that great oxygen throughout the day. I think movement in any form is wonderful for sleep. Just, I even notice with my boys, if they’re very active throughout the day and they’ve done a lot of sports or they’ve, they’ve gone to the playground and we take a hike in the evening, they sleep so much better if they’re sitting on their devices or they’re just sitting at their desk all day, it’s not the same. So just getting out and moving your body is very important. And yoga is one of those things that’s very portable, that you could do anywhere, anytime. Even if you do some chair yoga stretches, it relieves tension in the body and the mind. When your muscles are relaxed and released, it’s much easier to let go at night. And when your body’s relaxed, it reminds your mind to relax. And I think that’s a very important part of being able to fall asleep at night. When you’re able to let go of the racing thoughts, yoga helps you again, really hone in on just your breath and what your body is doing. And you’re able to kind of set thoughts aside. So if you can take what you’re practicing on the mat off the mat, it’s really amazing.

DS: I want to learn so much. So like, are there different types of yoga that would be better at certain times to do it more restorative for sleep at night? Or do you find that any type of yoga tends to inform sleep and help sleep? 

KM: I agree with you time of the day because I do think a vigorous Vinyasa or power yoga or sweaty yoga class, hot yoga seems to be very popular these days, isn’t ideal before bed.

Actually, your body wants to cool down before bed. That’s why it’s really important to keep your room cool and dark and a hot yoga class or a really sweaty yoga class might heat your body up and you might have a hard time falling asleep, especially if it’s very close to bedtime. 

DS: Okay. 

KM: A hot sweaty yoga flow power vinyasa class earlier in the day is amazing because again, it’s getting your blood flowing, it’s releasing toxins, you’re sweating, you’re moving your body, you’re getting all that great energy earlier in the day, which I think is very important.

If you’re practicing closer to bedtime or before you fall asleep at night, that’s when a restorative cooling type of practice really comes into play, whether it’s yin yoga, where you’re not going to do sweaty rajasic flow, you’re just going to sit quietly in postures for up to three to five minutes and you’re opening connective tissue, which is very nice before bed. Restorative posture is where you’re being held by props, propped up on a bolster and a nice reclined Supta Baddha Konasana, which is that butterfly pose line on your back.

Really beautiful way to end the day, to breathe, to just kind of hone in and relax. Restorative child’s pose, any gentle stretching closer to bedtime can really set the scene for a good night’s sleep. It could almost become a nice little routine or ritual. I think it’s very important to have that bedtime routine that becomes consistent.

It’s just the same as a child, you know, when they were young, it would be like book, bath, bed, or, you know, for adults, it’s similar. It’s really nice. Like yoga stretching, bath, wash face, brush teeth, go to bed. 

DS: Yeah. 

KM: But I think if you’re going to do a more athletic yoga, it’s better to do it earlier in the day. And it can be mid afternoon, just not right close to bedtime. 

DS: So yeah, I mean, routines are definitely something that we, we just forget about doing for ourselves as adults. So I like that. And I think when the pandemic hit, full disclosure, my goal for myself was to start doing more restorative yoga. I’m a marathon runner, so I needed to like, poses to for opening up my hips and stuff were like huge.

So a lot of restorative yoga. I watched a lot of Peloton videos, a lot of your videos and I think people get very focused on not looking at a blue screen and the blue light at night. But you know what? I think the benefits of doing all that guided for me way outweighed any risk of watching the blue light. So that’s good. I’m glad you agree with that. 

So is there- 

KM: I love that you’re a marathon runner. I don’t know if we talked about that or not. 

DS: No, we haven’t. 

KM: ’cause I just did my first marathon in April in London. That was really fabulous. 

DS: That’s on my bucket list so, and so is there a certain type of yoga that you find, especially after like, let’s talk about hard runs, right?

So sometimes you, you’re exhausted, your legs are just killing you, are there certain types of yoga at night that you would recommend? Would it mostly be restorative? Are there other types of poses that you might recommend to people at night specifically? 

KM: That’s when I love doing more of that restorative practice at night. And when you were talking about runners and, or just people in general, a lot of us have tighter hamstrings. I love lying on my back at the end of the day, grabbing a yoga strap, looping it around my foot, giving my hamstring a gentle stretch, letting my leg open to the side and then a gentle twist to the other side.

I think floor poses or floor focused poses are really nice for runners. You’re exhausted after a run. The last thing you want to do is, like, some active stretching. I think dynamic stretching before a run is okay, but that passive restorative type stretching or yoga after a run is amazing. And again, in the evening can be really nice.

DS: Yeah. And I find too that some of that type of yoga helps with like, I have restless legs sometimes too, especially after a long run. So I do find that sometimes that can be very beneficial for me as well. So even more reason to do it. 

So let’s talk about the breath work and meditation part that builds into yoga so often. So can you talk about how that might fit into a daily yoga practice or separating it from yoga even, like doing some of the meditations that you lead, what is the specific benefit of meditation in and of itself? 

KM: Meditation is such an incredible way to relax the mind. So the way yoga works through the body, it’s more of like a somatic movement type practice where you’re really using the body to hone in.

I feel like meditation is where you’re using the mind to settle down and the two are very complementary. And it’s lovely to do a meditation practice before or after a yoga practice, but you can do your meditation practice at any time during the day. Or a lot of times it’s beneficial at night because that’s when people tend to have a lot of those racing thoughts. A lot of anxiety about either what happened during the day, or what they need to do on the next day, and meditation puts you right in the present moment, or it’s trying to help you hone in on just being present with where you are, which can be super beneficial with falling asleep, and /or just relaxation and calming the nervous system in general.

And I always try and remind people that there is no right or wrong with meditation and that it’s okay to get LIT, which we call lost in thought, because it’s okay to have those thoughts. The main goal is that we’re just trying to create a little more space between the thoughts or not get so connected to those thoughts that it keeps us awake or keeps us, you know ruminating about these thoughts or anxious about those thoughts so if you can step back and somewhat remove yourself from the thoughts you’re able to respond to them as opposed to be reactive to them. So you’re reacting to this energy or this mind chatter that keeps happening where what we’re trying to do is just be able to respond to it in a way that’s very calm, and we do that with ourselves when we start to meditate and become less judgmental and just more observant, and then we’re able to do that with others.

That’s where I find my meditation practice is so beneficial because now with my children, I can be become more responsive and less reactive. It’s just a practice. It’s very hard. I think it’s very easy to get caught up in reacting. 

DS: Yeah. I think the thing that holds so many people back from doing meditation is that there’s so many different types and I think people, and styles, and I think people think, like sometimes patients that I work with think that it has to be a half hour multiple times a day, like where, if someone wanted to start, where would you recommend they start or tying it to yoga like what would you say for a new person with this?

KM: I think even five minutes of meditation a day is wonderful. And you can start with that five minutes, maybe first thing in the morning when you wake up, just so you can check in with yourself and see where you’re at. And then another, maybe five minutes at the end of the day, whether it’s right after you get home from work and you need to decompress or right before you go to bed. Does not have to be super long. 

I have built up to a 20 minute practice twice a day, but again, I’ve been practicing yoga and meditation for years. And when I did a training with a teacher, maybe three years ago, it was this Vedic style of meditation where you get a mantra. 

DS: Okay. 

KM: It’s kind of like transcendental as well, where they give you a mantra. And you just repeat the mantra in your mind and eventually it helps you drop into a deeper state. You might also just like paying attention to your breath. You could literally just, a lot of kids I often say, put a stuffed animal on your belly. As an adult you could put a pillow on your belly and just watch the rise and fall of your abdomen and chest. Let the pillow just kind of rise and fall with your breath and keep coming back to the breath every time you feel yourself drifting off. So breath is a great anchoring tool. Mantra is a nice anchoring tool. Body scans are a nice anchoring tool, where you take a moment, whether it’s first thing in the morning or midday or in the evening to kind of check in, relax your feet, relax your thighs, relax your chest, relax your arms. You can just go through your body and mentally relax places. 

DS: Okay. 

KM: And then there’s guided visualizations that sometimes people really like to find a meditation teacher you like, where they take you on a little journey, whether they take you to a lake or a mountain or the beach, you know, there’s sometimes people really like those guided visualizations. 

DS: Because it gives you something to focus on.

KM: It gives you something to focus on. 

DS: Okay. 

KM: So I think a lot like yoga, where you, it’s not one size fits all. And you might experiment with your, the styles you like or the teachers you like, maybe some people love vinyasa, others like hot, some people love restorative, you know, it’s same thing with meditation, you kind of find what technique works best for you and you can use multiple techniques just like yoga, as well, you can have a morning meditation that’s a little more energizing, like you’d have a morning flow that’s a little more energizing and you can have an evening meditation that’s soothing and calming. Sound bath meditation, right? Maybe you just turn on some music that puts you into a calm state. 

DS: So I know you have three young boys, right? Two of them are twins, right? 

KM: Two are twins, seven year old twins and an 11 year old. 

DS: So you got your hands full. 

KM: Yep. 

DS: Do they do any yoga with you or like, what would you recommend for maybe kids that if there are any parents who might be interested in getting kids involved?

KM: I think kids absorb it and love it. They love the shapes. They love it when you relate the shapes to whatever it is that they are involved in, whether your child is a dancer and you can say, you know, here’s this pose. It’s really great for your dance classes or yoga pose for your football or your soccer.

I think they love to notice how it affects what they’re doing or even with their schoolwork. I go into my sixth graders class on Mondays. We do Mindful Mondays and I tell them about certain postures that they can take, you know, at their desk, if their head starts to fall forward, how they can relax their neck and shoulders and eagle arms for focus during the day.

And then we’ll do peaceful fingers where we have the peace begins with me, where you tap each finger. And people love that because kids can even just tap the fingers to let go of anxiety. They love the I am mantras, giving them confidence and courage and strength or calmness, whatever they need throughout the day.

They like the rainbow breath where you inhale up the one side and exhale down the other. They like the butterfly tapping where they calm the nervous system, tapping opposite shoulder. 

DS: And I would think practicing it with them during the day would make it easier for them to utilize it at night if there is any like bedtime fear, bedtime resistance. So daytime practice would be good. Those are great. 

KM: And Timothy, my older son, we would listen to a meditation regularly at night to fall asleep a lot of times. He hasn’t been doing that as much lately, but it was a, it was a habit. Every night we would turn on a nighttime meditation and he would choose, and a lot of times it would be a YouTube meditation, and I would love it because I’m like, oh, this is a different style I’ve never heard, or I feel something, you know, I’ve learned something new. It’s really fun. 

DS: So transitions and stressors are happening for people left and right right now. How would you recommend someone utilize yoga in their daily life to maybe help with that? Is there a way, like you were saying, you used to have a more focused practice. Now you’re doing little bites. Like how can someone try to cultivate a yoga practice to help deal with life transitions?

KM: I think what’s really wonderful about the yoga practice is that it connects you to yourself every time you step on the mat. And I always learn something new about myself. Whether I’m doing five minutes of practice or 50 minutes of practice, like Jon Kabat-Zinn wrote the book, Wherever you Go, There you Are. So it’s this reminder that your home is inside of you. So whatever the transition is, if you’re moving to a new city and it’s scary, remember, you’re still you, your home is still inside of you. So your environment may have changed, but you’re still you. And so wherever you go, there you are, you’re still your anchor.

And you can remind yourself that you’ve got this beautiful connection to yourself. So even if it’s a breakup, I went through a divorce and I’ve been separated from my ex husband, three and a half, you know, my home is inside of me. Those things are extremely hard, and you’ll mourn whatever it was that happened, and it will take time to, you know, rebuild whatever the circumstances are that you’re dealing with, but you’ve not lost yourself, that you are always going to be able to come back to yourself as an anchor. 

I think that’s very important. You know, feeling your feet on the ground in a mountain pose and knowing that you’re the one that’s holding yourself up with your own two feet. Feeling your body take off in flight in a crow pose and knowing that you’re the only person holding yourself up with your own two hands. It’s this whole, you know, idea of like no one’s coming to save you. 

I think for children, that’s a little maybe too intense, but for children, knowing that they can be their own home and safety, that they can learn self soothing tools through yoga. That anyone can learn these practices. I feel like it’s been such a good friend to me all my life to be able to know, okay, I can calm myself down through my own breath and by moving my body. I don’t always need an outside source. Or when your, my dad would say, calm down, young lady. And I didn’t know how. If he had said, take a deep breath, you know, stretch out your arms, do whatever it is that you can physically calm down, then it helps you relax your mind. So I think it’s giving people, yoga really gives people tools for awareness. 

DS: And it’s beautiful.

KM: It really is beautiful. 

DS: So here’s the part I’m really excited for is tell us about some sort of pose or show us that would ideally help improve sleep or at least give- helps, I always say, like, help to set the stage for sleep because we can’t always force sleep to happen, but something that will set that stage.

So listeners we’ll put the timestamp to this section in the show notes so you can always come back and try it as often as you want. So Kristen, what’s something that they can try at home that might help them sleep well tonight? 

KM: This is something that you could do every evening before bed and you can start seated on the side of your bed so that your feet are on the floor and your eyes can be opened or closed.

You can place your hands on your thighs You want to make sure that you feel nice and secure and then you’re going to inhale, arch your back open in that cow shape and then you’re going to exhale round your spine. So we’re just going back and forth from a bigger extension to a flexion. And it’s a really nice way to open up the back and the shoulders.

A lot of times people have a hard time sleeping at night because there’s actual physical tension left in their body, in their shoulders, in their back, and like you were saying, the restless leg syndrome even. So sitting on the side of your bed, you start with some gentle cat cow just to open up the spine and release the lower back, and you could go into a few circular movements, circling around in your seat.

I think that’s a nice way to reset the nervous system. It’s almost like you’re going through a spin cycle on the, on the washing machine. Like you’re just getting rid of whatever it is you want to in your body, in your mind. So after your cat- cows and a few of your circles in your seat, then you’ll take one ankle on top of the opposite knee so that you have the knee open and you’ll do a gentle shift forward.

So that’s a nice way to relieve the outer hips. It’s like a seated figure four or a seated pigeon, and you just take a few breaths on one side and then do the opposite side. Seated figure for you. So nice to know that you have the power to do all of these little things that can make such a difference.

Push the heels of the hands to the sky so that you can relieve that tension in your shoulders. You try and relax the shoulders but lengthen through the elbows and you find your breath there and you could even put something on that little altar above you, on your hands, on the palms of your hands, that you want to bring into your sleep, you know, thinking of positive energy and positive things, or maybe it’s a gratitude tray.

What is on your gratitude tray above your head this evening that you could think of, a few things you’re super grateful for? 

Then you release and circle out your shoulders and then you can lie down in your bed. So you feel nice and relaxed already. Bring your feet together. Soles of your feet together, knees apart in a goddess type shape. And you can put one hand on your heart and one hand on your belly. And you can inhale into the hand on the belly, and then you can exhale out the hand on the heart. So you can start to feel your belly expand as you inhale, you can feel your chest relax as you exhale. And this is a really nice way to be in this goddess shape as you’re following the breath.

And then you can let go. The knees come together gently and walk your feet a little wider and then drop the knees together in your constructive rest. Now you can still keep your hands where they are or you can relax your hands by your waist. And in that constructive rest, you could let your legs kind of rock a little side to side.

Kind of like rocking a baby and it’s also a nice way to release the front of the hip flexors. And then you could eventually just let both knees drop to one side and do a very gentle twist for the lower back. And then let your knees drop to the other side for a very gentle twist. And then when you finally come back, you just let your legs fall forward out in front of you and you’re able to rest. You’re kind of in a Shavasana type shape, but maybe takes 5 minutes, 10 minutes max, depending on how long you want to hold the poses. But totally portable. It feels so good. 

And if you wanted to say, reverse the order in the morning. You would start out waking up, doing your twists, you know, finding your goddess, connecting to your breath, do your little windshield wipers, come up to sit on the side of your bed. And before you jump out of bed, you can do some of that nice cat cows. Some of those circles. And then you can set your altar up for the day. 

DS: That’s great. I could see my, my almost nine year old daughter. Absolutely loving that whole routine. Like I can see that I think for, yeah, some kids I think would absolutely love that. So I’m going to try that. Okay. 

So Kristen, we always like to end with a segment we like to call Something to Sleep On. So it’s one last point to share with anyone looking to change their sleep habits. So when it comes to yoga and sleep, do you have one final thought for the audience? Maybe something to sleep on?

KM: There is one thing that I often say at the end of my yoga practice. Every time I tell my students and it’s reminding myself even, I bow forward and seal in my practice. And then I say, remind yourself that everything you could possibly ever want, have, or need is right here inside of you. 

So it’s this reminder again of you are the captain of your own ship. You have all of these incredible tools inside of you, and it’s just a matter of tapping into them and keep discovering your own inner potential, and to remind yourself that you have so much to offer this world, and to try and let go of this feeling of pressure or judgment or anxiety or stress, that just remind yourself that you are such a gift to this world.

And the more you practice yoga, meditation, mindfulness, breath work, you just keep connecting to yourself in a deeper way. And the more you’re connected to yourself, and the more you have these tools to rely on, I think it starts to become less stressful, that you have a little more control in the evening to say, okay, I’ve got all these different things I can try and I can do and I can relax my mind and my body and I know that everything’s inside of me. 

DS: Thank you. A lot of the people I work with who have insomnia, they have a lot of pressure anxiety. They dread the night as it gets closer and I think having a practice like this helps to take away some of that pressure that they’re putting on themselves and being tied to an outcome of I have to force sleep. I have to sleep tonight. This is just being okay with being in that moment, so. 

KM: Being in that moment, letting it happen. Remember you’re not a human doing you’re a human being. So if you can just keep allowing yourself to be, you know, and just, yeah, take that pressure off yourself. 

DS: Yeah. So Kristen, thank you so much for being here. This was a really special episode. 

KM: Thank you, Dr. Shelby. I really appreciate you. 

DS: I really appreciate it. I can’t wait to listen back and I can’t wait to practice that yoga with my daughter. 

KM: Oh yes. I’m so glad we made this happen. Thank you. 

DS: Thanks for listening to Sleep Talking with Dr. Shelby, a Sleepopolis original podcast.

Remember if you’re tired of hitting snooze, hit subscribe or follow right now in YouTube, Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you’re listening. And for even more sleep tips, visit sleepopolis.com and my instagram page @sleepdocshelby. 

Today’s episode was produced by Ready Freddie Media. Our Senior Director of Content is Alanna Nuñez. Our Head of Content is Molly Stout. And I’m Dr. Shelby Harris. Until next time, sleep well.