Is Yoga the Solution to Better Sleep?

Lisa Sanfilippo, the Life Centre’s long standing expert in yoga for better sleep shows you how the vastly different practices of yoga can help different aspects of your sleep and how stepping up to address difficulties sleeping just might help you overhaul your life.

We know that yoga offers us so many different tools- and practices differ vastly. Lisa’s approach to finding a ‘yoga sleep prescription’ that’s right for you depends on whether you’re having trouble getting to sleep, staying asleep, or waking early. Are you sleeping short and fast or long and listlessly? Might it have to do with caffeine and sugar intake, when you’re eating or exercising, or even a hormonal imbalance? It may have to do with trauma or long standing stress. Or it may be situational, like a new baby, a home move or new job. Most of us have trouble sleeping at some point in our lives.

Lisa says “Instead of a one-size fits all, over nearly 20 years, I’ve learnt how yoga affects every aspect of my body and mind.” Her approach shows how different poses, breath practices and forms of meditation all have different effects on your body- the musculoskeletal system, your nervous system, and the all important endocrine system that governs the hormonal balance in your body.

For example, according to Lisa “a strong vinyasa class late at night might make you feel tired enough to get to sleep, but may have the opposite effect once you’ve gone to bed, collapsed, removed the top layer of exhaustion and the nervous system peps back up again because it doesn’t remember how to rest deeply. It may seem counter-intuitive, but doing restorative poses in the morning is the answer for some people’s sleep problems, while others need deep rest in the afternoon. “

We all know that sleep is one of the most vital parts of our life. It’s when we touch into our deepest unconscious, repair and renew the brain, and replenish the body. We all need the best sleep and rest we can get.

“For many of us” Lisa says, “it’s the ‘canary in the coal mine’ and when we start addressing our sleep difficulties, we can learn to unravel our unhealthy habits of body and mind, alleviate some of our deepest seated troubles, and start feeling freer.” Lisa’s approach shows how yoga and all aspects of your daily habits affect sleep. She shows how these can simply become the most important step in learning to care for your health and happiness day to day. Her integrative course combines wisdom from Western medicine (including a look at circadian rhythms) with Ayurvedic traditional approaches to daily habits, integrating nutrition, self-acupressure points, yoga postures, breathing practices and meditation techniques.

Lisa offers regular Yoga for Sleep Recovery courses which are designed to give you the tools you need to get a better night's sleep right away. With Lisa's tried and tested 4 week course, you can free yourself of pills, potions, gadgets and apps.