Creating a bedtime yoga routine sets the stage for sound sleep.  In the evening, you should be careful not to over stimulate yourself with vigorous yoga practices that feature heating and energizing functions such as back bends and swiftly moving pose sequences. You might start your practice by washing up for bed and gathering everything you need, including an eye bag, pillows, blankets, and some quiet music.  You might like to burn incense or candles at this time.  If you use yoga props like straps and blocks, get those too.

     Clear a space around your bed for yoga.  Remove anything that could interrupt you, even subconsciously.  Turn your clock around so you don’t notice the time, turn off your TV and phone, dim the lights, and take a seat on the floor beside the bed.  Just as you would at the beginning of our yoga class, arrange yourself to sit on the outer edge of your sit bones. 

     Close your eyes and begin to breathe slowly and evenly through your nose.  Shrug your shoulders, bringing them all the way up to your earlobes.  Exhale deeply, roll your shoulder blades backward and squeeze them together.  As you drop your scapulae down your back, lift your heart.  Raise your abdominals up and gently pull the navel toward your spine.  Allow your jaw to hang open loosely, and rest the tip of your tongue on the back of your front teeth.

After you have taken 10-12 mindful breaths, release your neck, do some wrist circles and shoulder circles.  When you are ready, come into a tabletop position with your hands directly under your shoulders, and your knees directly under your hips.

1.Cat & Cow Sequence:  With the tops of your feet flat, inhale and tip your nose and tailbone upward.  When you’re ready to exhale, begin to push the ground away using your shoulders and the palms of your hands.  Simultaneously, you are tucking your tailbone and rounding the back.  Allow your head to relax; don’t try to hold it up.  Inhale, and drop the belly back into Cow and repeat, linking your movements with your breaths.  Cat and Cow are gentle poses that help maintain range of motion and flexibility in the low spine.  You may want to do this 10-12 times or more. This sequence is great for practicing linking the breaths with the movements.

2.Child’s pose: from a tabletop position, drop your bottom back toward your heels and stretch your arms forward as you touch your forehead to the floor or the top of a yoga block or stack of blankets.

3.From Child’s pose, stretch your palms forward, moving your hands about shoulder-width apart.  Widen your fingers, inhale, look upward, and on the exhalation, begin to straighten your legs and lift your bottom as you come into Downward Dog.

4.On an exhalation, walk your feet up between your hands, bend your knees a little and hang.  Drop your head.  Pull your navel back toward your spine, and breathe slowly and evenly.  You might stay down for as many as 6 breaths and work your way up to 10.  The goal of a standing forward fold is not to get your palms on the floor.  It is simply to create space in the spine and close down the body.

5.Bring your arms out to the sides, bear your weight on your heels, and press through the feet up into Mountain Pose.

6.Take a few breaths in Mountain Pose.  Raise your hands overhead and on the next exhalation, perform a backward bend (just a small one!). Gently shake out your limbs and lay down on your bed.

7.Draw your shoulder blades back, and then down, lift your heart, tip your chin downward and take a few breaths.  Bring your ankles up to waist level (or a little lower if that’s appropriate for you).  Place the soles of your feet together and draw your tailbone downward.  This is Supta Baddha Konasana.

8.Release your ankles, hugging your knees to your chest. Open both arms out to the sides, at shoulder level, as if you were making the letter “T” with your body.  Inhale, and then on the exhalation, lower both knees down to one side.  Look out at the opposite hand.  Keep your shoulders pressed down; allowing one of the both of them to migrate upward will negate the pose.  Keep breathing, but when you are ready to switch sides, bring your knees to the midpoint on an inhalation, and drop them to the other side as you exhale.  Again, you are looking out over the opposite arm.  As you rest in this gentle twist, allow each exhalation to draw your knees even further down into the pose.  Inhale and come back to the midpoint.

9.Hug your knees to your chest and lower into Savasana.  Cover up, put your eye bag across your closed eyes and observe your breath.

10.Nighty Night!

     At this point, you might incorporate a recording of a favorite meditation (find one in the Listen section of this site) or some light music.  Don’t forget to blow out your candles! Namaste!

Copyright 2008 Kelly Gilliatte RYT,

Innerspace Yoga LLC.  All rights reserved.

Contact: kellygilliatte@innerspaceyogas.com