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Their goal was simple but ambitious: find the single exercise plan that seems to help troubled sleepers the most.<\/p>\n
Why yoga helps you sleep<\/p>\n
The work was led by Li Li, a sleep and exercise researcher at Harbin Sport University<\/a> in China. Li Li focuses on how detailed exercise prescriptions can change conditions such as insomnia and other long-term sleep problems.<\/p>\n The team ran a network meta analysis, a statistical approach that lets scientists compare many treatments even when trials test different matchups.<\/p>\n They combined thirty randomized controlled trials from more than a dozen countries, all focused on people with clinically diagnosed sleep disorders across different ages.<\/p>\n Each trial asked participants to follow a specific exercise plan, then measured changes in sleep quality using questionnaires or overnight recordings in a sleep lab.<\/p>\n The analysis treated exercise<\/a> like a recipe, looking at workout type, session length, weekly frequency, program duration, and how hard people were asked to push themselves.<\/p>\n Across all those combinations, one pattern stood out. High-intensity yoga done twice a week, with each session lasting 30 minutes or less over about eight to ten weeks, produced the largest improvements in overall sleep quality scores when compared with other programs.<\/p>\n In a new meta analysis of these trials, that prescription ranked ahead of walking programs, resistance routines, traditional Chinese practices such as tai chi, and other aerobic workouts. <\/p>\n The same analysis found that exercise plans with different settings still helped, but none scored as highly as this short, regular burst of demanding yoga.<\/p>\n What this means for other exercise<\/p>\n Importantly, almost every non yoga exercise program in the analysis still produced better sleep outcomes than doing nothing structured at all. <\/p>\n High-intensity yoga may have sat at the top, yet the broader picture shows that moving in many different ways tends to push sleep quality in a positive direction.<\/p>\n Other big research projects have crowned different winners, which shows how sensitive these rankings are to who is studied and how exercise is prescribed.<\/p>\n One earlier analysis<\/a> that pooled 58 trials found that intense combined routines that mix aerobic workouts with resistance moves tended to give the biggest boost to sleep quality.<\/p>\n A separate study<\/a> ranked Pilates as most effective, with aerobic exercise and mixed aerobic plus resistance training again scoring higher than yoga for better sleep.<\/p>\n The fact that different statistical models and trial sets generate different winners is a reminder that exercise<\/a> science does not yet have a final answer to the question of which workout is best for every sleeper.<\/p>\n Yoga might calms wired brains<\/p>\n High intensity yoga is not just gentle stretching; it raises heart rate, works large muscle groups, and keeps people focused on steady, controlled breathing.<\/p>\n That breath work can stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system, the calming branch of the autonomic nervous system that slows the heart and supports digestion and recovery.<\/p>\n A recent review of breathing practices reported that slow, deliberate breathing shifts the body toward parasympathetic dominance and lowers stress and anxiety levels.<\/p>\n Lower stress makes it easier to fall asleep and stay asleep, so a yoga<\/a> style that builds breath control and physical effort at the same time may deliver a double benefit.<\/p>\n In people diagnosed with chronic insomnia, a meditative yoga practice called yoga nidra improved both subjective sleep ratings and sleep lab measurements compared with a standard therapy program.<\/p>\n Participants who learned yoga nidra fell asleep faster and showed better sleep efficiency on overnight recordings than they had before training.<\/p>\n In healthy adults without insomnia, another experiment<\/a> reported that several weeks of yoga nidra changed brain activity patterns on electroencephalogram in ways linked with deeper rest and also improved night time sleep ratings.<\/p>\n Findings like these support the idea that certain yoga practices may nudge both the body and the brain into a state that favors more restorative sleep.<\/p>\n Yoga, sleep, and human health<\/p>\n Even with yoga at the top of this new ranking, the researchers are clear that there is no single exercise<\/a> prescription that will work best for every person with sleep problems.<\/p>\n Age, existing health conditions, schedule, and personal preference all influence which kind of movement someone can keep doing over the long term.<\/p>\n If yoga is appealing and medically safe, a structured class that feels physically challenging but still manageable, practiced regularly for several weeks, may mirror the programs that performed best in the trials.<\/p>\n Anyone with heart disease, joint problems, or other medical issues should talk with a clinician before starting a demanding routine that includes weight bearing poses or quick transitions.<\/p>\n For others, choosing any form of regular movement that raises the heart rate a bit and can be kept up week after week is likely to support better nights as well as better overall health.<\/p>\n Small changes, such as standing up more during the day, taking stairs when possible, or adding a short walk after dinner, can also help reset a sluggish daily rhythm without feeling overwhelming.<\/p>\n The study is published in Sleep and Biological Rhythms<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u2014\u2013<\/p>\n Like what you read? Subscribe to our newsletter<\/a> for engaging articles, exclusive content, and the latest updates.<\/p>\n Check us out on EarthSnap<\/a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls<\/a> and Earth.com.<\/p>\n \u2014\u2013<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A new wave of sleep research is pointing in a surprising direction. For people with diagnosed sleep disorders,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":340117,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[49,48,407,84],"class_list":{"0":"post-340116","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fitness","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-fitness","11":"tag-health"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=340116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340116\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/340117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=340116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=340116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=340116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}