If you have ever lain in bed at 11:47 p.m. with a brain that will not stop, you know that "just relax" is not a useful instruction. The nervous system does not take requests. It takes input.
Bedtime yoga is one of the gentler forms of input you can give it. Long holds, slow breathing, supported shapes — these are signals to the body that the day is closing. Not magic. Just a steady wind-down that, repeated nightly, becomes a cue your brain learns to trust.
The ten poses below can all be done in bed. You do not need a mat. You do not need to be flexible. You need a pillow or two, a blanket, and twenty minutes. Move slowly. Hold each pose for five to ten slow breaths unless noted otherwise. Breathe in through the nose, out through the nose, with the exhale a little longer than the inhale.
Before you start: set the room
Dim the lights. Phone face-down or in another room. If you have a sacred corner — a small altar, a candle, anything that signals "this is wind-down time" — light it now. The ritual is part of the practice.
If you do not have one yet, even a single object you only touch in the evening can become this cue. Many practitioners find that having a dedicated calming surface — a small altar table or shelf — gives the wind-down a physical anchor. We will come back to that at the end.
1. Reclined Easy Pose with hands on belly
Lie on your back with knees bent and the soles of your feet together, knees falling open like a butterfly. If your knees are far from the bed, slide a pillow under each thigh. Both hands rest on the belly.
Breathe into the hands. Feel the belly rise and fall. Eight to ten breaths. This is your arrival pose. You are letting the day land.
2. Knees-to-Chest (Apanasana)
Bring both knees up toward the chest. Wrap the arms around the shins. Gently rock side to side, then settle.
This pose calms the lower back and signals the front body to soften. Hold for eight breaths. On each exhale, let the knees come a little closer to the chest, without forcing.
3. Supine Twist (Supta Matsyendrasana), both sides
Still on your back, draw the right knee in. Let the right knee fall across the body to the left. Right arm reaches out to the right. Turn the head to the right if your neck is happy.
Stay for ten slow breaths. This twist gently decompresses the spine after a day of sitting and walking. Switch sides.
Cue for the breath: inhale, lengthen the spine. Exhale, let the knee drop heavier. Repeat.
4. Reclined Bound Angle (Supta Baddha Konasana)
Back to the butterfly shape, but now arms out to the sides, palms up. If your knees are uncomfortable, prop them with pillows. A folded blanket under the head is nice.
This is a chest-opener and hip-opener combined, which is exactly what most of us need at the end of a day spent hunched over screens. Hold for fifteen to twenty breaths. Yes, that long. Let the chest melt.
5. Happy Baby (Ananda Balasana), the gentle version
Knees come back toward the chest, then open out toward the armpits. Grab the outer feet, the ankles, or the backs of the thighs — whichever lets you breathe. Press feet into hands, hands into feet.
This one releases the hips and lower back and almost always makes people smile, which is also useful at bedtime. Hold for eight breaths. If it feels silly to rock side to side, rock side to side. That is part of it.
6. Reclined Single-Knee Hug
Right knee into the chest, left leg long on the bed. Hold the right shin or the back of the right thigh. Breathe.
This is quieter than knees-to-chest and lets one side at a time soften. Ten breaths each side. Notice which side feels tighter — useful information, not a problem to fix tonight.
7. Legs Up the Pillow (a bed version of Legs Up the Wall)
Stack two or three pillows. Scoot your hips close to them. Rest your legs on top so the calves and feet are higher than the heart. Arms out to the sides, palms up.
This is one of the most effective wind-down poses in the entire yoga repertoire. The slight inversion supports relaxation, slows the heart rate, and lets the lower body unload. If you can stay here for five minutes, do.
This one is a candidate for your nightly anchor. It is the pose I come back to on the nights when my brain will not stop chewing on the day.
8. Child's Pose on the bed (Balasana)
Come to your knees in the middle of the bed. Big toes touching, knees wide. Sit the hips back toward the heels and fold the torso forward. Forehead on the bed or on a stacked pillow. Arms forward or alongside the body.
The forehead-down contact is calming in a way that is hard to describe — it just is. Hold for fifteen breaths. Let the exhale get long.
9. Seated Forward Fold (gentle, propped)
Sit with legs extended in front of you on the bed. Stack a pillow on your thighs. Fold forward over the pillow. Rest your forehead on the pillow. Arms drape wherever they want.
This is not a flexibility pose. The pillow does the work. The point is the inward-folding shape, the forehead support, the long exhale. Hold for fifteen breaths.
10. Savasana with a body scan
Roll onto your back. Legs long, slightly apart. Arms slightly away from the body, palms up. Head centered.
Start at the feet and slowly move your attention up the body. Feet, calves, knees, thighs, hips, belly, chest, hands, arms, shoulders, neck, jaw, face, scalp. At each spot, exhale and soften.
If you fall asleep here, that is fine. That is, in fact, the goal.
Breath patterns that help at bedtime
Two simple options to layer into the poses:
- 4-6 breathing: Inhale for a count of four, exhale for a count of six. The longer exhale gently activates the rest-and-digest side of the nervous system.
- 4-7-8 breathing: Inhale four, hold seven, exhale eight. Stronger effect. Do four to six rounds, then return to normal breath.
Do not force either of these. If counting becomes stressful, drop it and just notice the breath.
How long, how often
You do not need all ten poses every night. Three to five poses, fifteen minutes, done consistently for two weeks, will do more than an hour-long session once a month. Pick a short sequence and repeat it.
A solid five-pose bedtime mini-sequence:
- Reclined Easy Pose, 2 minutes
- Reclined Bound Angle, 3 minutes
- Supine Twist, 2 minutes per side
- Legs Up the Pillow, 5 minutes
- Savasana, 5 minutes
What to avoid before bed
- Deep backbends. Wheel pose at 10 p.m. is not a recipe for sleep. Backbends are stimulating.
- Strong twists or fast vinyasa. Save flow for daytime.
- Anything that makes you sweat. Cooling down takes too long.
- Breath retention without exhale-lengthening. Strong pranayama can be activating.
Bedtime yoga is slow, supported, and forward-leaning or supine. If you are upside down or arched back, you are doing daytime yoga in a nightgown.
Creating a wind-down corner
If you do this practice nightly, eventually your body learns the cue. The cue gets stronger if there is something physical attached to it — a small altar table, a candle you only light at this hour, a wooden object you only handle in the evening.
Many practitioners keep a small altar table next to the bed for exactly this purpose: a place for the candle, a sprig of herbs, a stone, a journal. Nothing complicated. Just a surface that says this is where the day ends. If you are putting together a sacred corner of your own, our handcrafted altar table is built for that role — small enough for a bedside, solid enough to feel grounding.
For a broader look at gear that supports a calm home practice, our full collection includes the ritual objects and meditation pieces that many of our customers build their evenings around.
One last note
Yoga before bed is not about fixing your sleep. It is about giving your body and brain a consistent doorway from "day" into "night." Some nights you will go through the whole sequence and still lie awake. That is not a failure of the practice. It is a Tuesday.
Keep showing up. Over weeks, the doorway gets wider.