5 Yoga Poses for Better Sleep

Mandy Oaklander,Heather Jones
Apr 28, 2017
TIME Health

If your goal is sounder sleep, it’s a good idea to try tiring yourself out during the day. Any exercise can do this, of course. But yoga may be the best type for the job.
Not only does yoga offer (often intense) physical activity, but it imparts an extra mind-body benefit. “Yoga helps elicit what we call the relaxation response, which is essentially the physiological opposite of the stress response,” says Laura Malloy, director of yoga programs at Massachusetts General Hospital’s Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine. It helps ease any muscle tension you’ve built up throughout the day—even unknowingly—while soothing a racing mind.

For a natural sleep aid, Malloy recommends trying these five yoga poses before bed. Do each pose for six repetitions, or hold them for six cycles of deep breathing.

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