8-Minute Yin Yoga For Sleep | Calm Your Nervous System

Unwind before sleep with this 8-minute Yin Yoga practice, designed to calm your nervous system and gently release tension in the hips, lower back, and legs. This short bedtime Yin Yoga sequence includes legs up the wall, a reclined stacked knee twist, and a brief child’s pose to help you slow down, relax, and prepare your body for rest.

Perfect for evenings, late nights, or anytime you need a quick reset before bed.

No props required, just a wall and a few quiet minutes.

Transcript

Welcome back. So all you'll need for this practice is a little bit of empty wall space in your room. A couch will also work for this. We're going to begin in legs up the wall or legs up the couch. So you'll just need a little bit of space for that. So to come into legs up the wall or legs up the couch, Just bring one of your hips right up against that wall or couch and carefully swing your legs up the wall or onto the couch and lay yourself back. So you want your spine to be straight, Hips and shoulders in line. The legs can be a little bit bent if you're doing legs up the wall and they will be bent if they're on the couch so that is good. Legs can also be straight if you have lots of space there at the back of the legs. So wiggle yourself into this shape. Make sure that you feel relatively comfortable and then decide would you like to rest your hands maybe on your belly or something a little more grounding comforting or would you like to rest your arms overhead with a little bend to the elbows to help you open up the shoulders and the chest so you can decide what feels best for you. And once you feel settled in, The eyes might close here. The whole body mind to rest in this shape. It will also support your sleep and it also supports your overall health and circulation by allowing the old blood from your feet and legs that often sits at the bottom of your body to flow back up toward the heart. So this is very rejuvenating for us. Let's just rest here for another moment. Beautiful. So now from legs up the wall or couch, You'll just wiggle yourself a little bit further away from that wall, Bending your knees and bringing the soles of your feet to the wall. We're going to come into a twist so the arms can open up to a T and just let the legs fall over to the right side, Stacked one on top of the other. Twisting through the spine now. Your head can stay straight or you can turn your head to the left, Bringing this twist into your neck. Once you're in the twist, Relax your whole body. Enjoy another deep breath here and then carefully bring your legs back through center and let's just take them over to the left and your head can turn to the right now if you like. Relax your whole body into this twist. Beautiful. Join another breath here. Now take your right arm across and close your chest, Coming into a fetal pose on your left side and then gently from there, Let's roll onto our fronts and come into a child's pose. So sitting back on the heels, If that feels good for you, Resting your head on the ground or maybe on your stacked palms, Allowing everything to settle here and open up along the back of your body. And from your child's pose, Let's slowly and carefully roll up to sit on the heels, Maybe keeping your eyes closed. Let's take a breath here in through the nose out through the mouth. So this concludes our mini yin practice for today. Thank you so much for joining me and I hope you have a beautiful rest of your night.