3am Yoga?

How to cure insomnia by doing yoga at 3AM.

21:04 26 October 2016

TV’s doctor Michael Mosley had been having sleeping problems that have affected the quality of his life. He usually finds himself waking up at about 3am, terribly tired and irritable. Every night, he would dread going to sleep. He described it like being trapped inside his own, personal groundhog day.

 

He then tried everything - from changing the mattress to taking over-the-counter melatonin capsule – to address the problem but nothing seemed to work.

 

He then found a research that confirmed that his sleeping pattern was actually normal. It turned out that he was not an insomniac but someone whose sleeping pattern harks back to an earlier time. According to the research, our ancestors typically go to bed when the sun sets, sleep for four or five hours, and then get up in what is known as first sleep. They will then stay awake for an hour or so and go back to bed for a ‘second sleep.’

 

After reading the research, Michael accepted that his body wants to sleep that way. So instead of fighting it, he learned how to go with the flow. Knowing that he would wake up at 3am, he adjusted his bedtime allowing him to block four hours for his first sleep followed by about an hour of wakefulness and then a further three hours of second sleep.

 

The time between the first and second sleep can be used to perform yoga poses to relax the body.