5 Yoga Poses to Help Your Child Sleep

Did you know one of the benefits of yoga is improved sleep? For both parents and educators this is a big one! Poor sleep can reduce mood, energy levels and fact retention (memory), it can also be a risk factor for a number of other mental and physical health problems. Yoga helps to improve the quality of sleep by moving people move into the parasympathetic nervous system - think rest and digest. For children this is really important as they can often find themselves over stimulated at the end of the day with racing thoughts. Improved sleep is something a lot of parents reported to me after their child had attended my classes so I worked with a small film team to produce the ready to sleep mini series for you. Your child can join me for the next four days for a quick (5-10 mins) yoga session in their PJs right before bed.

Today I want to share five easy and child safe poses with you to help your child (or you for that matter) enjoy a better night’s sleep. Give these poses a go right before bed time and begin to feel the benefits. With all yoga, regular practice is the best way to feel the benefits so try to add these poses into your routine consistently if you can. Always remember: yoga should feel good and if any of these poses don’t, please ease out of them and leave this pose out from your routine.

Butterfly

Sitting upright we bring the soles of our feet together and open them like a book. We can flap our wings and see how it feels to lead forwards into the stretch. You can stay here for as long as feels good for you. Try taking a few cleansing breaths in this pose with a deep inhales and sighing the breath out of the mouth.

Child’s Pose:

Starting on all fours we sit back onto our heels and reach our hands in front of us. We rest our heads onto the mat. It might feel nice to place a pillow between your legs to rest down on, this is fine too, or even to place a block under our forehead and roll back and fourth across it to massage the middle eye. We can stay here for as long as feels comfortable and focus on taking deep and slow breaths.

Cobra Pose:

We come onto our tummy, placing our hands underneath our shoulders we wiggle up into a snake. We can practice a hissing snake breathe here, inhale through the nose and exhale with a gentle hisss sound.

Knees to Chest:

We gently roll onto our backs and bring our knees into our chests and hug them close. You can rock from side to side here if it feels good or try lengthening one leg at a time.

Legs up the Wall:

Lying flat on your back, arms out wide, lift your legs and feet up to the sky. You can prop a pillow under your hips to help you find the sweet spot where you don’t need to put any effort into keeping your legs in the air. Let the breath come into its natural rhythm here and just notice how it feels. Can you feel it in your nose or your throat? Maybe in your chest or your tummy. Stay here as long as you feel comfortable before gently bringing the soles back onto the mat and then stretching into savasana or curling over to sleep.

Whilst you practice have you considered diffusing essential oils? Adding high quality, pure, essential oils to my routine has really improved my sleep. I also add them to my bath with some Epsom salts in the evening. I love the DoTerra oils as they are ethically sourced and as pure as you can get. My favourite oils for bedtime are Lavender, Chamomile, Frankincense and YlangYlang although you my mind that different oils work well for you. You can purchase the DoTerra oils from my site here.

If you enjoyed this little infusion of yoga into your routine and want your child to enjoy more of the benefits of yoga why not join my Find Your Focus programme. Its a six week source combining the powers of yoga and journaling to help children build their attention span. With two on demand yoga classes a week and a downloadable journal full of games, journal prompts and challenges its a fun way to equip your child with lifelong tools to help them focus and self-regulate.

Which pose did your child enjoy best? I’d love to know so please leave e comment or let me know on my socials!

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