Are you a mom that doesn’t remember the last time you slept through the night? Do you dream of going on vacation just to catch up on sleep? Are you so tired that you get angry at the silliest of things like your husband not replacing the roll of toilet paper when you’re pregnant and get up to pee every 2 seconds through the night? You threatened to pee on his pillow if he did it again! At work you struggle to keep your face from slamming into the keyboard if you stay sitting for more than 15 minutes.
Queue music, “You are not alone, I am here with you...” - Thank you Michael!
Oh motherhood, I miss my sleep and I’m guessing we’ve all been there. Sleep deprivation is a certainty sometime between the last 3 months of pregnancy and the first few months of your precious human’s life.
Or you could be like me. My sleep deprivation lasted for 2.5 years!
Yes, that’s right! 2.5 years!
Somehow I survived 2.5 years of very little sleep while building manned spacecraft for NASA.
Are you wondering what magic elixir I took to pull this off?
A hint: it wasn’t coffee. When I was pregnant that was the magic elixir that made me puke in an office full of coffee drinkers.
The Combination of Restorative Yoga and Yoga Nidra to the Rescue!
Yoga Nidra is a guided meditation that systematically takes you into a conscious state of sleep. At no time is relaxation mentioned, but that is exactly what is achieved. And that relaxation is equivalent to a deep state of sleep. Yoga Nidra, aka yogic sleep, has been scientifically proven to take you through a full sleep cycle in a one hour session. You get the equivalent of 3 hours sleep in a 1 hour class!!!
What mom in their sleep deprived mind would pass that up?!
Restorative Yoga is an asana (posture) practice that involves several props to support the body in a pose while simultaneously relaxing the body. For most of us, the body needs some form of preparation to allow meditation to be a deep experience. In fact, the whole premise of the asanas is to prepare the body for meditation, based on the ancient teachings of yoga by Patanjali.
Can you imagine how this practice works hand in hand with Yoga Nidra?
Ideally, sleep deprived moms would combine these practices daily to help with deeper sleep during the short stints of sleep we do get. If that was even close to possible we would feel like we did actually get a good night’s sleep every night like we did before we got pregnant.
Let’s be real, though. We’re moms with limited time.
It was a goal for me to do this once a week. That might have happened 50% of the time. But when it did happen, I appreciated it SO much! I’d walk away feeling like a new person that could keep up with my Energizer Bunny of a daughter, that could stay awake a whole day at work and then come home to make supper without being irritated at everything! And that is how I survived 2.5 years of sleep deprivation as a new mom!
Does it sound too good to be true? Are you thinking you need to go to a yoga study to figure out where to begin? Does it seem like it would take up too much of your time?
I want to give you a small sampling of what a combined Restorative Yoga and Yoga Nidra session would be like in the comfort of a room in your house with a locking door and your favorite headset. Please make sure there is another responsible person around to watch the kids just in case you fall asleep. I want you to be able to experience the same benefits I experienced: relaxed, well rested, and emotionally in control.
That’s why I created the 5 Minute Guided Meditation Audio with Restorative Yoga Pose Document Download for you to download and use whenever and where ever you need it. It’s short, sweet, and effective at calming you down and resetting your mama bear attitude.