Lesson Overview

In this lesson, we explore the importance and impacts of sleep and insomnia, and how yoga can help with good sleep.

Objective

Gain a foundational understanding of the impacts of sleep and inadequate sleep on health and well-being, and yoga practices to support good sleep.

Description

Describe the many aspects of health and well-being that are directly related to how well or how poorly we sleep. Explain how sleep is related to recovery from trauma and stress. Cite research related to the effects of insomnia, including the relationship between Alzheimer’s and sleep disturbances. Describe how yoga promotes good sleep. Provide an approach to practice, plus specific poses and sequences, to support good sleep. Provide examples of practices that are typically not advised for late in the day. Provide more yogic techniques aside from asana to support good sleep. Summarize other key advice for improving sleep quality and duration.

The Role of Sleep in Health & Well-Being

According to Ayurveda philosophy, sleep is one of three pillars that endow the body with strength, vigor, and healthy growth. – Ram Rao, PhD

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Most people don’t realize that sleep is a keystone of health. When we’re sleep-deprived, it’s really hard to eat well or to have the energy to exercise. It’s hard to think straight. It’s even hard to stay in a good mood or have a positive outlook on life. – Mark Hyman MD

Good sleep is directly related — and fundamental — to health and well-being. Poor sleep can cause or exacerbate a variety of issues.

Sleep is just as critical to our body as other basic functions of survival like eating, drinking, and breathing. Sleep is needed for a number of reasons, including energy conservation, restoration of our tissues and cognitive function, emotion regulation, and immune health. – Danielle Pacheco

Sleep impacts:

• Overall functioning and health (link)
• Stress resilience
• Cognitive function and memory
• Work performance (link)
• Physical capability, accidents, exercise performance
• Feeling states, mood, emotional disturbances, depression, burnout (link) and (link)
• Recovery from trauma and stress (link)
• Energy levels (link)
• Appetite, weight, fat gain, cravings, insulin resistance and diabetes
• Testosterone levels
• Heart health and cardiovascular disease (link) and (link)
• Immunity and susceptibility to degenerative diseases and infections
• Releasing / forgetting impressions we don’t need
• Clearing toxins and the resultant risk of brain diseases (link)
• Fear (fear responses significantly wane in the slow-wave sleep cycle) (link)

You may also wish to see Olga Kabel’s commentary here about the Yoga Sutras related to dreaming and deep sleep. She explores a number of considerations, concluding that one interpretation could be:

So looking at sutra 1.38 through the prism of modern science we can translate it like this: "Fully engaging with and comprehending the nature of dreams and the deep sleep state can lead to mental stability." - Michael Joel Hall

The Amazing & Vast Effects of Good Sleep

A good night’s sleep is the foundation for a healthy, happy, productive existence. Good sleep staves off many of the bad things listed above. And without good, regular sleep, we just go through life in a scattered daze, everything foggy, slightly confusing, and less enjoyable. We’re not really ourselves if we haven’t slept. We desperately need a good night’s sleep, every night. But good sleep isn’t just about avoiding the negative effects of not sleeping. Sleep is an incredibly active time for our bodies and brains when we undergo all manner of growth and repair processes through a dynamic biochemical orchestration. Sleep is key, essential, absolutely downright necessary for our basic physiological operations… Sleep spurs the release of human growth hormone (HGH), an essential player in cellular regeneration (and fat burning). A full night of sleep won’t just reduce the risk of brain degeneration, it will enhance your memory performance and creative problem solving skills the next day, not to mention make you a better person to be around by helping you see the positive in your interactions… College athletes who sleep two extra hours per night have more accuracy and faster sprint times. Good sleep means you dream, and dreams are the way your brain deals with issues your conscious self cannot or will not.  – Mark Sisson

Inadequate Sleep Has Wide-Ranging Ill Effects

Inadequate sleep can quickly sabotage your efforts at getting healthy and losing weight. Sleep is a major cornerstone of an energetic, joyful, healthy life. Not getting enough sleep or getting poor-quality sleep adversely affects hormones that make you hungry and store fat. One study found just one partial night’s sleep could create insulin resistance, paving the path for diabesity (late-onset diabetes associated with obesity) and many other problems. Others show poor sleep contributes to cardiovascular disease, mood disorders, poor immune function, and lower life expectancy. – Mark Hyman MD

Releasing / Forgetting Impressions We Don’t Need

According to researchers, sleep helps us to forget some of the things we learn each day. Learning requires new neuronal connections or neuronal branching in our brains, which help neurons to communicate with neighboring neurons quickly and efficiently. Furthermore, these new neuronal branches also store firsthand memories of impressions that we draw in each day through our five senses. However, some of this information is redundant and does not require being stored. For example, you do not need to know what clothes you wore to work on a Thursday couple of weeks ago. Similarly, the people you saw at the airport terminal is not a value for the brain. – Ram Rao PhD, New Theory About the Purpose of Sleep (and Why It’s So Important to Get Sound Sleep) link

Sleep Flushes Out Toxins in the Brain

Lack of sleep impairs reasoning, problem-solving, and attention to detail, among other effects… [In addition] a mouse study suggests that sleep helps restore the brain by flushing out toxins that build up during waking hours. The results point to [the] role for sleep in health and disease. – National Institutes of Health, How Sleep Clears the Brain

Dreaming Directly Involved in Managing Stress & Healing Trauma

Have you ever had the experience when you get worked up about something one day and after a night of good sleep it seems much less dramatic? This happens because there is a built-in mechanism in our brains that enables us to “get over” our small and large dramatic events…. While you dream, your brain separates the memory of the event itself from your emotional reaction to it… This is a natural process that happens every night… Normally, dream sleep is the only time during the entire 24 hour daily cycle when the production of noradrenaline (the stress chemical) in the brain is completely shut off… This combination of a sufficient amount of dream sleep AND low levels of noradrenaline in the brain enables us to “get over” our strong emotional experiences. In fact, pioneering clinical work… demonstrated that we have to dream about our traumatic experiences to get over them. – Olga Kabel

People Paid to Perform Prioritize Sleep

Tom Brady is one of the (if not the) greatest football players of all time. He’s won five Super Bowl Championships and is still dominating at over 40 years old. You know what time he goes to bed at night? 8:30. Then there’s Roger Federer. He’s one of the greatest tennis players of all time. 20 Grand Slams. Nearly 100 tour wins to go along with over $100 million in career earnings. You know how many hours he likes to sleep a day? 11 to 12. (Otherwise, he says he “just doesn’t feel right” and says he’ll get injured.) Then we have another all-time great: LeBron James. He and Federer must be studying the same peak-performance playbook because he’s another 11 to 12 hours of sleep per night kinda guy. Now… Why in the world would the world’s best athletes spend so much time in bed?! Because they get paid to perform. And they know that SLEEP is one of their secret weapons. The question is: Why do YOU think you can get by on so little sleep? – Brian Johnson

See Also

• Nervous System & Stress
• Yoga’s Impact on the Nervous System & Stress
• Trauma