Remember when you were a child, playing all day long, and at the end of the day, you would take a bath, put on your pajamas, and go to bed to sleep like a log? Those times were much simpler… At least when it came to falling asleep. But we reach adulthood, and our minds race with daily responsibilities.
Insomnia is one of the greatest plagues afflicting modern humans. We can spend hours tossing and turning in bed, staring at the ceiling, unable to fall asleep. Such is the urgent need to fall into the arms of Morpheus that taking melatonin just before bedtime has become normal. If you don’t want to give up and start taking medication on a regular basis, there are still ways to channel all our energy into getting tired and reaching bedtime ready to rest as soon as we lay our heads on the pillow.
Best of all, there’s no need to start intense exercise or even sign up for an expensive gym membership.
Improving sleep
To perform this exercise, all we need to do is roll out a yoga mat. Then, we lie down and let ourselves be carried away by our breathing. Although it may seem silly, a meta-analysis of 30 randomized controlled trials revealed that regular high-intensity yoga is associated with improved sleep.
Yoga was found to be more effective than walking, resistance training, combined exercise, aerobic exercise, or even traditional Chinese exercises such as Tai Chi. These trials were conducted in more than a dozen countries and involved 2,500 participants of all ages who had suffered from sleep disorders.
The group of researchers from Harbin Sport University in China soon hit upon the key: it seems that high-intensity yoga, done twice a week in 30-minute sessions, was the best antidote to sleep deprivation. Close behind in effectiveness was walking. Going for a walk every day. Positive results in just eight to 10 weeks.
However, when attempts have been made to replicate the findings, they have been somewhat inconsistent; a 2025 meta-analysis found that aerobic exercise and moderate-intensity exercise three times a week was the most effective way to improve sleep quality in people with chronic insomnia.
However, yoga continued to have more significant effects on sleep outcomes. This is because yoga is difficult to classify as aerobic or anaerobic, as its intensity can vary widely depending on the technique used. What we can be sure of is that any type of daily exercise will make it easier to fall asleep.
Yoga benefits
Yoga can not only increase your heart rate and help strengthen your muscles, but it can also regulate your breathing. Actively controlling your breathing can activate the parasympathetic nervous system, which is actively involved in rest and digestion. Other studies even suggest that yoga regulates brain wave activity patterns, which could promote deeper sleep.
Something we don’t often consider is the quality of our sleep. External factors such as random as alcohol consumption or heavy dinners just before bedtime can seriously worsen the quality of our sleep. However, one of the biggest culprits of insomnia in the West is smartphones. It has been proven that looking at screens that emit blue light disrupts our circadian cycle, as they inhibit the organized secretion of melatonin.
If you feel like you can’t fall asleep at night, we recommend that you stop looking at your phone at least an hour before going to bed. By being alone with our own thoughts, we can process all the emotions we have been repressing during the day.
In addition, our brain will be able to rest from all the doomscrolling we are doing on apps that have been psychologically designed to capture your attention, even when you are exhausted and just want to sleep.