Remember the feeling you get after an amazing yoga class, your body feels completely relaxed and rejuvenated, your mind clear and calm, energy flowing from head to toe and a light glow radiating from your skin. That’s how we should be feeling every morning after a proper night’s sleep. Here’s why sleeping is as beneficial as that early morning yoga class.

Improves Your Memory

Sleeping strengthens our memory skills and improves our cognitive function. Whether you’re trying to learn something physically or mentally our brain consolidates this new learned information whilst we sleep. Sleeping also enhances the brain’s ability to restructure memories at a faster pace.

Rest and Repair

While we rest our body switches into repair mode. Our entire system slows down to heal itself. Muscles and joints are able to relax, our digestive system slows down, the mind slows down, our immune system is boosted and hormones stabilise within in the body. Just like a long savasana after yoga, the body reaps full benefits after a long sleepy slumber.

Improves Your Metabolism

It’s interesting to know that sleep and metabolism are controlled by the same area of the brain. If we do not receive adequate amount of sleep this can disrupt the function of our metabolism affecting weight management. So it’s not surprising to hear that when the body is in a state of fatigue the brain has difficulty signalling leptin and ghrelin, the hormones that regulate our hunger signals.

Overall Wellbeing

There’s truth to the saying “you got out on the wrong side of the bed”. Irritability, mood swings and poor concentration are all signs of sleep deprivation. Over an extended period of time lack of sleep can have serious impacts on our mental health resulting in depression and other mental disorders. It’s no question that a good night’s sleep should be incorporated into our health regime.

Finally, just like you don’t expect to see benefits after one great yoga class, you won’t see benefits after one good night’s sleep. We need to be sleeping regular hours every evening to see true benefits within our body. Of course, the number of hours differs depending on the person and the lifestyle you lead, but the suggested shut-eye is an average 8 hours. Night, night.

 

 

Article by Lauren Roberts

As a yoga instructor and someone who is passionate about health and wellbeing, Lauren is happily blogging about the things in life she loves. Through her creative writing, she aims to help people nourish and care for their body and mind. A true foodie at heart Lauren is often found at the latest cafe hot spots critiquing the food, or in the kitchen creating a new recipe.

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