Best Ayurvedic Practices for Sleep with Bonnie Wallace | Ep. 64

Hi everybody. I am so excited for this conversation ahead. If you are ready to learn about the relationship between Ayurvedic medicine and sleep, this is the conversation for you. And it's especially exciting because Hadlee is joining Bonnie and I in this conversation. And as you know, Hadlee is our in-house Ayurvedic guru. So I think this is going to be a really, rich, powerful conversation. And before we jump in, I want to make sure that you get access to this amazing resource that Bonnie has created for you. If you're ready to deepen your relationship and your trust with yourself and your loved ones, then Bonnie's got your back and she's created a complimentary mini book to help you do just that. This book is designed to help you establish a plan ahead of time. So that if depression or anxiety or trauma strikes, you'll be equipped to pull yourself out of those places without spiraling. And to get access to this free complimentary resource, you just simply go to her Instagram bio and click on the button that says free mental health tools PDF. And to find her on Instagram, her handle is bonnie. Dot G-E-N-E. So we'll spell the whole thing out for you, B-O-N-N-I-E dot G-E-N-E. So if you haven't followed her, go in there right now and click that follow button and download that resource. And so now's the fun part. So welcome, Bonnie. Hadlee and I are so happy to have you here.

Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here with you guys. This is gonna be such a treat.

And so Hadlee, you love Ayurveda, you love sleep. And so I'm really excited to have your input on this too. And so Hadlee, thanks for, thanks for being here and lending your wisdom.

Of course. Yes. I'm so excited. I always say that we kind of sleep is the basis of all of the rest of the things. And then Ayurveda is my favorite thing ever. So I'm just so excited to learn from you today, Bonnie.

Uh, I, I love hearing that. Um, Ayurveda is such a brilliant system. I love that you have that love for it. Of course, of course you do.

Um,

and yeah, sleep, sleep is foundational. I, I tell my clients, like, before we do anything, we have to look at sleep. Because it doesn't matter what we do, if sleep is not ideal, then it's like, it's just going to bounce everything else. We're going to bounce off. Sleep is so important.

Yeah. Yeah. Could you tell us a little bit about how that happens? So, you know, say we're like, oh, well, you know, I'm eating all of the things, I'm doing all of these habits, I'm meditating or whatever, but I'm not getting the quality or quantity of sleep that I need. What kind of happens? What breaks down there?

So when we're not getting the adequate sleep that we need, it impairs all of our bodily systems. So even if we are then waking up and we're able to to still do like a meditation practice or, you know, eat healthy, and healthy is relative, always depends on the person. Right. But our nervous system is still going to be really fatigued and really challenged, and it's not going to be able to actually receive the nourishment, the other nourishment that we're giving ourselves through the meditation or the food or the exercise. And, um, you know, depending on like the type of exercise and even the type of what we might talk about today, like the type of pranayama, the type of breathing techniques, those kind of things could exacerbate the quality or the, the low quality of sleep. And then if you're already not sleeping on top of it and you're going and doing a really intense workout or something that's not harmonious to supporting good sleep, then we're kind of at odds with what we're trying to achieve. So without a solid night's sleep, it's— we could say that— I don't want to say that every other good thing that we do is totally futile because it'll still be better than if we just throw it all to the wind, right? But it's gonna have— it will take a lot longer for it to benefit us, and it will— a lot of that potency can be lost on us because our body, our nervous system, our brain is not able to actually receive it because it's not getting the foundational nourishment of sleep in the first place.

I think a lot of my clients and myself can resonate with that. You know, you, you always hear you got to sleep more, you got to get a good night's sleep, make sure you sleep. And my journey is that I couldn't sleep. I was in such a state of autonomic arousal, of fight, flight, freeze, that no matter what I did, sleep was the last thing on my body's mind. And so I imagine that you hear this from a lot of people. It's like, okay, well, sleep is important. I get that. But what do you do in order to achieve sleep? And one of the things you said that I'm excited to learn more about is that you could be doing what you think are the right things, but it could actually be counterproductive. And so tell me a little bit more about that.

Yeah. So that's Um, just in all, all this? Well, okay, so if we start with— let's start with maybe food, breathing techniques. What, what topics should we start with in terms of, um, what could be counterproductive, or even just lifestyle?

Yeah, let's start with food, maybe food, exercise, because those are the 2 biggest things that most people talk about, at least with me. Yeah. I don't know if that's the same for you guys, but yeah. Yeah,

totally. Okay, so, so with our diet, um, I'll start with, um, not even what we're eating necessarily, although that will of course affect our sleep quality, but how we eat is really important in Ayurvedic medicine. And, and is starting to get more attention. It's becoming more of like a noteworthy factor in our digestion, in our gut health, is how we eat. And you'll see a lot of Ayurvedic principles coming into play, or I see them coming into play now in like functional medicine protocols and more, we'll say, like modern-day protocols where it's like take a few breaths before you eat and after you eat kind of thing. And so there's more of this understanding of it's not— how we eat is almost more important than what we're eating, um, from the standpoint of what is our nervous system, what is our digestive system actually able to do. So if we are— I work with Quite a few people who are in like high-performing positions like CEOs, general managers of some sort, and they— their schedule is like go, go, go. And so they will eat like standing up or eat while walking, eat while multitasking, or skip lunch altogether because we don't have time for that. How, how that starts to create this disturbance down the line in, in our various systems in the body. So you'll start to see some sort of digestion upset. And generally, a lot of that can really come to the surface, particularly at night, because during the day we are So stimulated and our, our nervous system has just kind of gotten used to being overstimulated and we just kind of stuff all that stuff away. But then at night when things calm down a little bit, all of these symptoms that we've been suppressing, they come up and we'll get some sort of, um, you know, whether it's acid reflux or cramps, gas, bloating, a lot of that can come up. in the evening when we're actually thinking about relaxing and we have more space to experience these things. So that's one way that how we eat really is affecting our sleep down the line. And also timing with our meals is important. Mm-hmm. So in Ayurvedic medicine, we understand that So we've got the three doshas, right? Vata, Pitta, Kapha. Pitta kind of governs our—it governs our digestion, but it's also our like our our go mode. It's it's work mode, and Pitta time happens in the morning and again in the evening at from ten. PM to 10 to 2 AM. And so if we are, for instance, going to bed past 10 PM, and we often will get a second wind and we get energy all of a sudden, so we can keep working on that project that we were already, you know, maybe overstimulated by. And But this period of time, 10 to 10 PM to 2 AM, is also very important for our detoxing. That's when our body naturally detoxes. And so when we're not sleeping, or if we have eaten a late meal, then our body switches from detoxing to digesting. And the amount of effort and energy that it takes to digest the meal while we're sleeping versus when we're awake is a lot more and it's very inefficient. So, and that can create a lot of disturbances in our sleep is when our body's trying to break down, particularly if it's something really heavy late at night.

That's so interesting to hear you say, because I think about some of our earliest experiences as infants is we have a bottle or we nurse and then we pass out. And we have like milky sleep. And so what I'm—

yes,

what I'm hearing you say is that if you eat too late and you're in that 10 PM to 2 AM window, that instead of being able to detox and sleep, that that energy is then shunted over to digestion and can interfere with detoxing and sleeping.

Right, right. And there's, you know, there's, there's activity that's happening when, when we're digesting, and that activity can be, um, you know, a bit of a disturbance for the sleep. So it is— so it's the, um, taking away from the detoxing mode, and then also the process of digesting can, can disturb our sleep. Um, And with infants, yeah, that's, that's a good point. Um, yeah, I'm not sure how that relates with as adults or how that changes as, as we grow. But yeah, that's, that's a good point.

Yeah, I know that infants do have a different circadian rhythm. We actually have different circadian rhythms at different stages of our lives. And Ayurveda also talks about how there are different— the doshas are different at different stages of our lives, which is just so fascinating.

Right.

But I think that that probably plays into it because we do— because as our circadian rhythms shift, we need to shift in order to kind of be in alignment.

Right, and to honor those, those shifts and those different phases of our life. And babies being in the cocoon time of life, they're just building muscles and fat and tissue and sleeping and building mucus. And yeah, yeah, probably a little different than—

Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah, so So earlier, lighter dinners is like, that is like the habit that makes the biggest difference for the people that I work with. Um, and like for sleep quality and just for, for other habits, other, uh, things. Yeah. Is that what you found as well?

Yeah. Earlier, lighter dinners. Um, if you're eating animal proteins, favoring them at lunch, which can be, um, Kind of opposite of a lot of our culture, we tend to have our biggest meal at dinner. And so there's kind of a mindset shift. Um, it's like, still, you know, have— if that's family time, if dinner time is family time, still do that. But as much as possible, shifting the heavier to digest meal to lunchtime, which is when our digestion is strongest and can handle heavier things. And then at night, you Yeah, having a lighter but still nourishing early meal, um, and then trying to avoid very spicy food right before bed can really help as well.

Yeah, yeah. And even if you can't do that, like just stopping, like closing the kitchen after dinner, even if it's like a, you know, a bigger dinner or whatever, can be huge because so So many of us, like, that's our wind-down time, right? We get the ice cream and Netflix and, and that's like our me time. The wine.

Yep. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah. And those kind of, um, habits, you know, they They serve a purpose, right? Like, they're— they are our wind-down time. Um, my, my teacher has— I really like her way of describing habits as habits are a time when we go unconscious. Mm-hmm. And sometimes we need that, right? Like, we need to just— like, okay, we're just gonna shut things down for a minute, kind of recharge. But when we start doing that For years without pausing to examine. It's like, okay, what is behind this habit? Is this thing still helping? Like, um, you know, I started doing it for XYZ reason. Is it still necessary, or is there space for, um, some sort of transition or an alternative? That I feel like might support either my digestion, my mental health, my spiritual health more. And so it's kind of taking an inventory periodically and be like, okay, my habit for the last 5 years after work has been come home, I, um, have a beverage or I, you know, have a couple cookies or, and I, I love cookies. I'm not like, I'm not— Me too. Ex nihilo on any of these things, but it's just to practice bringing in some deliberate examination of, is this thing, is this, you know, little habit, is it, is there any space for things to shift? And to shift because that might give me space in other parts of my life that I want to see evolve or change a little bit.

I can introduce a pattern interrupt, which I think when it comes to insomnia and sleep is really important because like Hadlee, you were saying earlier, like our body gets into these patterns, into these circadian rhythms, and then we have to change as they change. But if we're creating these patterns and it's like, I come home, I have a glass of wine, I eat 3 cookies, and then I watch TV, and then I go to bed at 11 o'clock. And, you know, if we're in this pattern that's reliable and reproducible, that's what our nervous system is going to attenuate. And so I love what you're saying is taking an inventory of your habits. What is our pattern? And maybe it's just simply a matter of doing a pattern interrupt and shifting it. There's this really interesting concept in Jungian psychotherapy and Carl Jung was the founder of psychoanalysis, a student of Freud, and he talked about absurdity and the psychology of absurdity and how that can be incredibly freeing from depression and anger and anxiety is by simply just throwing in a little bit of something unexpected and different.

Yeah, I love that.

I love that.

It's like we're just gonna change things up.

Yeah,

adding a little bit of, uh, variability.

And just circle back—

we all need more absurdity. Like, yeah, all of us.

I, I love that. I love that he called it that, absurdity.

Carl Jung is the best. And so just to kind of circle back to where we were as we started the conversation, we're talking about sleep and the importance of a good night's sleep. And then we sort of shifted into, yeah, but what if sleep is a problem? And so then initially you were kind of sharing with us, Bonnie, about how there could be habits that you're doing that could be counterproductive for sleep that you might not even know about. And you gave us some really good actionable highlights kind of right away. It's like, number one is how are you eating? Are you eating standing up, running around, or are you eating in a relaxed, Parasympathetic rest and digest state and how that can make a really huge impact in your assimilation of nutrients, utilization of nutrients, and then of course your nervous system. You talked about a couple of other hacks. I love what you said, Hadlee, about close the kitchen after dinner, because when I'm mindlessly chomping away watching Netflix or something, my kitchen is wide open and I'm like, hmm, what else can I chomp on? And then suddenly it's 11 o'clock. So I think those are really good strategies that, you know, a listener can take away right away from this. I wanted to kind of shift, if it's all right with you too, the conversation, because you have a lot of passion, Bonnie, about different yoga poses and the kind of melding of yoga with Ayurveda. And I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about that.

Yeah, I'd love to. So Yoga and Ayurveda, just briefly, they're sister sciences. In that relationship, Ayurveda is actually designed to help us heal our body, and yoga was originally practiced to help us heal our mind or move us closer towards self-realization. We've got the body and the mind covered by Ayurveda and yoga. How they support each other is that if you're on a spiritual path in Yoga. If you are having physical disturbances in your gut, if your bones are aching, if you can't sleep, it's going to be a lot harder to go anywhere on your spiritual path. And so following an Ayurvedic lifestyle can help on your spiritual path. And then vice versa, when you're practicing an Ayurvedic lifestyle, the discipline and the sattva, the harmony, the blissful quality that is cultivated through a yoga practice, that helps us stay consistent with Ayurveda. I think my headphones are going to die. I'm just gonna pop these out real quick. I apologize for that.

That's fine.

No worries.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Okay. Okay, so, um, When we are practicing yoga, then specifically I'd like to talk about the prana vayus just briefly. And the vayus are different directions of energy in the body, and they govern different organs, and they govern different systems. And these different energies or directions of energies, they either can give us things like enthusiasm, inspiration, or they can give us the type of energy that is grounding and calming. And then, you know, some variables in between. And so when we're looking at like a type of yoga practice that we would want to favor at night, it would be one that favors the downward energy, which is Apana Vayu. So Apana Vayu, this is going to be cultivated through generally forward folds and twists. And your intention also matters quite a bit. So what that means is that you can still have a yoga practice that incorporates forward folds and twists, but based on your intention and where your energy is held in the body during that practice, it could still be a very enlivening practice, or it can be a very calming and grounding practice. So your intention matters, but what that would look like then is that generally would like to favor a yoga practice or yoga poses where you're moving a lot slower, which that alone can be really tricky because many reasons, but largely, you know, we're kind of wound up, we're stimulated. And I think a lot of us think of a yoga practice and use it as a form of exercise, which is beautiful. Then we think of maybe moving quickly, right? But for the evening, you'd want to think about slowing down and then favoring poses that bring our belly to our thighs. Even just staying like lower to the ground, staying kind of more in like seated poses, and then doing twisting poses. And so these are longer held forward folds and longer held twists. that are going to stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system and help shift us from, you know, achieving operating mode to let's start to wind down and let's get ready to, to sleep so that we can continue the next day doing all the things that we want to do and that we want to achieve in an effective way.

So awesome. Yeah, so it sounds like most everything that we're talking about to help us actually get to sleep is all nervous system regulation, kind of getting into parasympathetic so that we can actually then fall asleep. Yeah?

It's, yeah, it's, it's a lot of that. It's I'd say that's definitely the root, right? Because, you know, whether we're not sleeping because of digestive issues or because we're sleeping really lightly, like we're just disturbed really easily and we wake up and then we can't go back to sleep, or we can fall asleep, but then we wake up and our mind is racing, thinking about work or, you know, our to-do list. Whatever it is, all of that starts in our nervous system. Mm-hmm. And so there's a lot of different practices, right, to regulate our nervous system, to soothe our nervous system, and to take care of ourself at different parts of the day so that when nighttime comes, There's not that, like I was saying earlier, when nighttime comes, our responsibilities are mostly done and there's like this quietness that the brain can often take as an opportunity to just dump like all of the things that you haven't been thinking about or been putting off or avoiding. And then, you know, we're just overwhelmed. And so this kind of comes into like our sleep hygiene and that sleep hygiene can be supported earlier in the day as well by making sure that we are taking care of our mental hygiene, our emotional hygiene, and checking in with all of the things that Just checking in and being honest with ourselves. Like, what, what is— what are we not acknowledging? What is too much for us? What is not sustainable? And cultivating some willpower to make the necessary changes for that so that we can sleep.

You're kind of We're sort of exploring how the different yoga poses can affect our nervous systems. And so the— there's certain poses that can shift us out of that kind of fight-flight awake sympathetic activation into a more relaxed parasympathetic state. And you were emphasizing those that favor the belly to the thigh. Yeah. Or kind of seated forward poses. And one thing that can come up that you mentioned is that the brain may use this as a time to just like start dumping information. And I really resonate with that, where when my nervous system, when I'm trying to shift it out of the, the vata chaos of my day,

Yeah.

is then I get this almost like rebound of mental chatter that can happen. And So I love the idea of— I do an exercise called thought relocation, which I teach people about, where it's like, I have these thoughts, your brain is thinking, and that could just simply be now that you're in a parasympathetic state, your nervous system is releasing stress. Yeah. As that stress is released, our brain assigns meaning to it. And so dumping it into a journal and just writing it all down so you don't have to keep thinking about it.

Yeah.

Then once we've done that is I do thought relocation, which is simply just notice where your thoughts are in your brain. Like for me, they're often like, I feel like my thoughts are happening in my frontal lobe, my forehead. And then you can start practicing an exercise where you push those thoughts forward and you imagine that they're maybe a foot or 2 feet in front of you. And then once you've done that, you imagine, well, what if I put my thoughts over to my right side? And then you can practice that and then over to your left side. And then eventually you can start to practice putting your thoughts behind you so that they're back in the background doing their thing, but that you have that mental freedom and space and clarity to begin winding down for sleep.

Yes. Yeah, I love that. I— that's, that's a tool that I use as not, not the mental relocation. I like that, but the, the— I call it like cognitive unloading with the writing. And it's like, let's get the things out that needs that need to be get out. They don't need to be solved, but just have a little purge. But I love that, you know, kind of maneuvering the thoughts around and creating this distance. And I kind of like the idea of looking at your mind and your thoughts as separate from, like, you are not your mind, right? You are not your thoughts. There's a separation there. And so with that separation, then there can be a conversation and a relationship and a potential, like, making a deal with your mind or with the thoughts. And as you are doing, you know, the, the relocation, it's like, can we— I'm acknowledging this, this theme or this topic or this thought, but can you give me some space? And we're going to go over here. And, and I'm gonna— we're gonna come back, like we're going to reconvene, but can you give me some space? and we need to sleep so that I can actually deal with you effectively. And having that kind of dialogue, that's something that works for me and I think helps a lot of my clients kind of, yeah, create the distance that much more. Yeah.

I love it. And I love the idea of Incorporating the physical practice with that as well, because sometimes I find that my clients and myself as well, like meditation practices— meditation was like the hardest habit for me to implement because sometimes I would get more stressed trying to like meditate right because I'm very pitta. Exactly. And I was like, I I wanted to do it the right way. Like, this is how you're supposed to do it. And so for me, the things— doing things with our physical body is kind of like a gateway for me, even to be able to get to a place where I can then do more of the mind-based meditation. But I need to get out of my mind a lot of the time. So I love the physical.

Yeah, yeah. I think— and I think that's true for a lot of people. is like using the physical body to kind of get rid of some of that surface tension so that you can actually sink a little bit deeper and kind of quiet. Because when the body, when, you know, when agitation in the body is quelled, that helps with the mind. Mm-hmm. And the mind can calm down a little bit. But yeah, and with the yoga practices or poses being— circling back to that for a moment— when they are gentler, quieter, calmer, forward folds, twists, that like— there was a period when I was doing— I was going to an exercise class. It wasn't yoga, but I was doing it in the evening. And then I couldn't sleep because I was so energized from this class and like I felt great. I was ready to like do everything, but it is the end of the day. It is time to go to bed. And so I had to switch and it is like these, so it is also honoring like, you know, the chemical processes in our body, like our hormonal waves and In the evening, we really don't want to stimulate cortisol even more. And so, it's— yeah, it can be tricky when there is pent-up energy that needs to be, you know, worked through. And I would say with that, even starting, like, if you need to do something a little bit more intense, I would favor just holding the pose, holding like a stronger pose, but just holding it for like 3 minutes. And so it's— we're reducing excess movement. We're holding still, but we're still kind of satisfying that pitta need, and we're kind of burning off some of that nervous tension. And then as we work through that, then we can start to move into the gentler poses and end with like some, some real gentle stuff. That would be like a halfway point.

I love that. Yes. Yeah. Satisfy the pitta, satisfy whatever dosha is rearing its head.

Yeah.

And then— Yeah.

It was like, we'll do a little compromise.

Awesome. So I would love to hear a little bit more about yoga nidra as well. That yoga is— I mean, I love yoga as well, but I, I'm not as knowledgeable at all about yoga as I have studied Ayurveda a lot more. So I would love to hear a little bit about yoga nidra and how, how that can help us when we want to do it. I know a lot of people do it like in order to fall asleep, but I, you know, there are different schools of thought on that too, so I'd love to hear from you.

Yeah, yoga nidra is a super powerful tool. So yoga nidra translates to yogic sleep, and there's different ways of doing it and different purposes of doing it. We could say that In general, the idea is to plant seeds into the subconscious that support our healing. So that can be physical healing, that can be mental-emotional healing, that can be kind of expanding our capacity for emotional regulation and nervous system regulation. And One of the beautiful things about yoga nidra is that when— so we're deliberately dropping ourselves into a state of deep sleep, and when— but we're retaining a semblance of consciousness. So we're not just blacked out. We want to remain somewhat aware. And When most people start doing yoga nidra, it's really common to just fall asleep because we're all chronically exhausted, but eventually we have this retention of awareness. You're kind of, you're like, you're not awake, you're not asleep, you're kind of in this in-between place. And when the mind is relaxed, kind of what we've been talking about with the nervous system, it receives information and retains information so much more. So when, when we drop ourselves into that state and then we go in and we plant these seeds, so I'll finish what I'm saying and then come back, and we plant these seeds, then our brain and our nervous system is so much more receptive to, to this information. And this information You're being guided. So yoga nidra is always recorded or guided from with a live person, and that is so you don't have to do anything. You don't have to work, and you can actually, you know, drop into this state. And you're being guided through different processes and asked to do various things. while you're in this place that support and nurture our physical healing and our emotional, spiritual healing. And yoga nidra, because we're dropping into that deep sleep state, of which in 8 hours of sleep we only get about 15 minutes of deep sleep, And yoga nidra, when we drop into that, about 30 minutes to 1 hour of yoga nidra is equivalent to about 3 to 4 hours of deep sleep. So it's hugely regenerative and nourishing for when we are— really any time, right? But particularly when we're healing from something. So recovering from surgery or an illness. When we are depressed and it's like we can't get out of bed and it's like, this is perfect, all you have to do is lay down and listen to this recording. And it is done laying down, but it's very supportive for healing after times of any sort of disturbance in the body and the mind. And when we sleep, that's when our body repairs itself as well. And so especially when we're recovering from some sort of illness or surgery, we really want to make sure we're getting good sleep so our body can repair the tissues and support us in the best way it can. So yoga nidra is really powerful for that. It

sounds like if you're struggling with sleep and if you have insomnia, that incorporating yoga nidra practice can be really good supplemental while you're figuring out how to get your sleep back on track. Because you're at least getting some of that repair and that rejuvenation. Like, that's a pretty, pretty big statement that it's like 3 hours of building, whereas like in an 8-hour period, we get 15 minutes of deep sleep.

It is amazing. Um, and that, yes, I would say it's, it's a great supplement. Um, One of my distant teachers, he's like down the line of my teachers. He tells this story of when he when he was getting his second PhD, his schedule was so intense that his and I don't I probably won't get the schedule exactly right, but his teacher had him basically switching out regular sleep with yoga nidra. So it was like. Half and half or something. It was like, okay, you're gonna do like 3 hours of work, you're gonna do Yoga Nidra for an hour, you're gonna do 3 hours of work, then you're gonna do regular sleep. And he had to break it up so that he could still stay sane and healthy and achieve everything he had to achieve. Um, so yes, it's a very powerful supplement. Um, in that I would just add the note that it is different from regular sleep, and we want to make that purpose clear for our bodies so that, and like when you're practicing it initially, when you feel yourself like drifting off into regular sleep, if you can be aware of that and just mentally tell yourself, okay, I am moving from— this recording and this kind of yoga nidra place, and I'm just going to sleep. And just mentally like make that discernment, and so that we can start to build kind of, yeah, just that distinction. And definitely I have people that like to use it to fall asleep, and I just tell them like just make that distinction when you're switching gears And we're going into regular sleep. And then it's still a brilliant practice to use like first thing in the morning as well. And then you'd probably be less likely to fall asleep if you got good sleep, which we're aiming

for.

Oh, that's so good to hear. Yeah, I've been using it to fall asleep. Um, like, it's like my— if I can't fall asleep, I'll like, that's like my sleeping pill. That's what I reach for. So, so it's good to know that I can just identify, okay, I'm transitioning into sleep sleep, not yogic sleep.

Right. Yeah, that distinction will help in terms of when and if you do use it at other times, that your experience of yoga nidra will be different than regular sleep.

Yeah, so I don't just fall asleep every single time.

Yeah, yeah, and there's, and there's things we can do in Yoga Nidra that we can't necessarily do in regular sleep in terms of like planting those seeds in the subconscious. It's a little different, and so we, we just want to be able to keep that distinction so that that's possible when we do it at other times, if we do do it at other times.

Yeah, that's awesome.

We can supercharge this with breathing techniques, right?

Yeah.

Yeah, tell me about that.

Yeah, so breathing techniques, beautiful way to affect the nervous system. Breathing techniques are most accessible and powerful tool to affect our nervous system, like immediately. So, in terms of sleep, then again, similar to like the poses, we would want to look at, is this going to stimulate my nervous system or is it going to soothe my nervous system? And in general, we can say a safe rule of thumb is that longer exhales than inhales are going to be more soothing for your nervous system. And so favoring any breathing techniques like— I would actually— so instead of— you could do like alternate nostril breathing or nadi shodhana if you're familiar with that. However, if you're sensitive Nadi Shodhana can be kind of pranically charged, meaning it can be slightly vata stimulating, so it could create a little bit more movement in the mind or put you more in the ethers when we want to be grounded. So if you find that you're very sensitive to that, then even a mental alternate nostril breathing. So it's the same thing, but no hand is involved and you're just imagining, sensing, visualizing the breath moving through the nostrils. And then with the longer exhales, that can be incorporated, you know, with some sort of hand mudra or just in and out through both nostrils and just lengthening the exhales. I would say with that, specifically for sleep, to avoid any breath holding. So there, and that is technically what pranayama is, is kumbhaka is when you actually hold the breath. But when When we're looking to sleep, holding the breath, even if it's after the exhale, which is generally going to have a longana effect, which is a soothing effect, they're very powerful. Holding the breath is very powerful. And to the maybe intermediate or beginner practitioner of yoga or breathing practices, adding breath holds, it's just not necessary around sleep. And again, if you're sensitive and depending on, you know, how long you are lengthening the exhales, too long of exhales can aggravate vata again because your, your body is empty, your lungs are empty, and that empty space invite— can invite vata to come in. And vata is responsible for movement, so that can end up again putting us in the ethers, making us a little spacey. So either longer exhales or just an equal breath pattern, so equal inhales and exhales can be really soothing, and just gradually kind of lengthening them out and finding a really easy breath pattern. Um, is one I like really well for soothing the nervous system and getting like in our body, and it's Brahmari breath or bumblebee breath. Are you guys familiar?

No, I've never heard of

it.

Yeah, I love that one. Yeah, it's— you're literally making a bumblebee sound at the back of your throat. There's a hand mudra with it if you like to do that. Some people find the hand mudra a little claustrophobic, but you essentially block off your ears And then you make this humming sound at the back of your throat while you're exhaling, and you do that several times, and that humming is so soothing. And it's also— the humming stimulates our vagus nerve, which is a big— plays a really big role in our parasympathetic nervous system activation. So that can be a really, a really nice gentle tool to use that I use for my anxious light sleepers quite a bit.

So you two know about this. Could one of you demonstrate it? Because this is the first I'm hearing of it.

Yeah.

Who's going to do it? Yeah, you do it because I don't know if I, I don't know if I'm going to do it like totally right.

Okay, so I'll do the whole hand mudra thing. So you place your thumbs in your ears and you're pressing this flap, I forget what it's called, into the ear. So you're blocking off your ears and then your pinkies are gonna go right above your top lip, right under your nose. Your ring finger and middle finger will rest on your eyelids and they're just resting, they're not pressing. Pressing, and then your pointer fingers rest right above your eyebrows. And so then I'm going to close off my ears and I'll do the humming sound. I'll just do it a couple or 3 times. Maybe once is enough. What do you think?

Yeah, that is— that's awesome. I love that one. I love anything that vibrates the vagus nerve.

Yeah.

So good.

Does the pitch make a difference? Like, is like a higher pitch or a lower pitch gonna have a different effect?

No, I don't think so, because people have different ranges. Um, I think whatever is the least effort for you, that, that would be my, um, inclination, is that if, if higher pitch is is easy for you. Don't strain and try to make it lower because that might be a little counterproductive. So I think just— it's really, it's the vibration. And generally we do like 9 rounds and then pause afterwards. And after you've done it for that long, it's so quiet. Internally, it's like you have this whole other experience of your— and like accessibility to your internal world. And, um, it's really, uh, it's really soothing. It's really comforting.

Thank you.

That's awesome. That— I feel like that's probably my highlight.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I hope that is like a treat and does something for you. I would love to, to hear your experience with it.

And I don't know that I've done them— done it with the mudra before, so thank you for that. Because anytime I'm like putting my hands over my eyes or like above, like on my forehead, my eyebrows, like that just immediately brings me into like, okay,

right,

I'm very safe.

Yeah, yeah, there's that like kind of coming Coming back to center, and we're also, you know, we're touching on different marma points or Chinese medicine meridian points, and that, that just like gentle pressure and presence, we're just starting to collect energy in instead of all of our energy being sporadically in 500 different directions. Mm-hmm. Some people like the mudra, Other people, depending on a lot of things, find it claustrophobic and they don't like it. So if you don't like it, you can still do just the humming and block your ears off.

So in the couple minutes that we have left together, is there anything that you can think of that's made a particularly big impact for you in your sleeping journey or in your clients that you want

Yeah. Oh, that's hard to narrow it down, but I would probably have to say again, so like the emotional hygiene. So being really diligent on addressing what your heart and what your mind needs to have addressed. If possible, either like it can be before bed doing the cognitive unloading, the writing, the thought relocation, or sometime else in your day. Um, so that that's not overwhelming you when you're trying to sleep. And then also screens off like 30 minutes to 1 hour before bed. And that can be a lot harder than it sounds because Our phones, our technology is just so, you know, instant gratification, little dopamine hits. Um, but, and especially depending on what we're doing on our screens, if it's something that is— not only is it going to be stimulating because of the blue light, but the content. Like, what is the content of what you're seeing? And sometimes you can't control what you see. All of a sudden you just Something like disturbing or negative, or, or maybe even it's, it's exciting, but, but either way, that can carry with you and really affect your sleep. And so creating some boundaries with yourself and saying, okay, we're gonna, we're gonna start incrementally shutting things down earlier and earlier. and replace it with something else. If there's a book that you'd like, or if like you want to get back into reading, if you've like stopped reading for whatever reason, this is a good opportunity. Or doing like an essential oil foot massage is a really beautiful practice that I like. And you just, you only need, you know, a couple drops of, again, like a soothing essential oil like chamomile or lavender, maybe rose flowers, or like vetiver. Oh my goodness, what is the other one?

Ylang-ylang. I love that one.

Ylang-ylang. Oh, it's like my favorite one. I can't think of the name, but anyway, doing Yeah, doing a little foot massage and just starting to do things that are connecting with, with yourself a little bit more and just kind of honoring. It's like, it's dark outside. If I want to be in harmony with nature, then it should probably, you know, my activity should reflect that and be a little bit Mellower, less light. Yeah, kind of soothing things. So those, those are probably my things, is the foot massage, screens off, and the emotional hygiene.

And with you two being Ayurvedic gurus, do either of you have like favorite nighttime tonics?

Yeah. What's, what's yours, Hadlee?

Well, golden milk. Yeah, I had that earlier. I'm, I'm in Europe right now, so it's really late for me. I usually am in bed by 9:30. It's 11:30 here because I was very excited to talk to you.

Thank you for being here.

But I already had my golden milk tonight before, before this call.

Really? Really? Yes. Um, yeah, so kind of along those lines, different Spices. So in Ayurveda, we do really love whole cow's milk, and this can be controversial for a lot of modern diets, but we consume it differently. So for one, Ayurveda doesn't consume really much of anything that's cold. So the cow's milk, when it's warmed, and spiced acts as a really brilliant carrier for the medicinal properties in the spices, and it's very— it's a very grounding and fortifying substance that helps to build our ojas, or our immunity and our physical mental endurance. So, um, but if you don't drink cow's milk, you can do an alternative, and the spices that I really like are cardamom and nutmeg. Those are— nutmeg is a sedative, and it's a nervine sedative, so it's going to be really soothing. And you can also, if you're feeling a little extra, you can put in a few cashews into your milk. simmer everything with the spices and then blend it all up, and that adds just a little bit more of that ojas quality, that fortifying grounding energy that we want before bed. You can add in some different herbs that I really like for soothing would be chamomile or lemon balm. It'd be really nice in there as well.

Yeah. And it's also a great option when I have had clients before who are like, oh no, I had my earlier, lighter dinner. And then I'm like, I'm so hungry right before bed. And they're like, but I don't want to eat and then throw my sleep like totally off. And so adding the cashews And kind of— and I've had them add some ghee or coconut oil or even almond butter, like a spoonful of almond butter into their golden milk. And that can be really helpful.

Yeah, yeah, just a little bit more nourishment, a little bit more sustenance. Yeah, definitely.

Yeah.

This has been so informative. I love everything that I've been learning about sleep. I think that a couple of big take-homes for me is having boundaries with my behaviors. And I used to have a really strong boundary. It's like close the kitchen. I think that's really valuable. I love the idea of elongating the exhale and the bumblebee exercise. I'm going to definitely try that and doing some— I'm really excited about that and I'm going to try it and I'm going to report back. And then I love the idea of having this kind of sleepy beverage. And it's great because you're getting in your body, you're activating your senses, and it's very grounding. Yeah. And so that's been really helpful. And I'm really grateful for your time, Bonnie, and just the wisdom that you're bringing to your audience and to your clients. And so you take on people for coaching directly, right?

I do. Yeah. I work with clients one-on-one. I'm based virtually. So I work with people all over the world and we focus primarily on our gut and mental health in my practice and disease prevention.

So that's awesome.

Yeah.

Amazing.

I'll include the links in the show notes so that people can for sure find you and remember to follow Bonnie on Instagram and download that free mini book, the free mental health tools PDF. You're going to love it. And you'll find all of her stuff. She's really well represented online. And so make sure that you follow, follow, like, like.

Yeah, you guys, her Instagram is awesome. She has some great videos on there. I've been going through them and they're entertaining and super informative. So definitely check her out.

Awesome. Yeah, I just, I just found you as well. And it's like, okay, good. Add each other to the team. Yes. You guys are awesome. And I'm so glad that, that we got to do this. It's been an honor to be able to be on here with you two and get to know you and speak about things that we both, we all, you know, care about and share hopefully some golden nuggets. with, with some folks that, that need the inspiration or insight or guidance and to really nourish their sleep, which will benefit the rest of their life.

Mm-hmm. Yes, absolutely. Thank you so much, Bonnie.

Thank you so much. Thank you.

Awesome. Well, we'll see you soon. Thank you. Take care, everyone.

Okay, you too.

Bye.

Bye.