An Evening Wind-Down for Busy Women
Evening routines tend to slip the moment work gets busy. Psychotherapist, author and yoga instructor Eloise Skinner explains why winding down properly matters for your sleep, your mood and your nervous system, and shares three gentle yoga poses you can add to your evening tonight.
In a world of never-ending deadlines and distractions, it can be a challenge to create an evening routine that sticks. It's easier than ever to tell ourselves we'll just send one more email, or check social media one last time, and before we know it the hours slip away and we end up racing to get to bed. Crafting an evening wind-down routine (and sticking to it!) is a challenge that many people might skip, but it comes with significant benefits for your mental and physical health.
In this piece, we'll look at the reasons why it's so important to have a process of winding down at the end of the day, and we'll end with three gentle yoga poses that you can slide into your new routine.
Why should we bother winding down?
The impact of a wind-down routine is evident on a number of levels: physical, mental, and emotional.
On the physical side, a wind-down routine gives your body a chance to prepare for sleep and slow down from the day. On a hormonal level, this can help with a drop in cortisol and a rise in melatonin, often known as the sleep hormone. Creating an intentional transition helps your body find a consistent sense of rhythm and structure, improving your overall sleep hygiene.
On the mental side, a wind-down routine reminds you that the day is coming to a close, and allows you to create an end to any daily working and life-related tasks. Winding down can also help you feel more calm and connected as you end your day, rather than continuing to ruminate over things that happened, or starting to feel anxiety about the future.
On the emotional side, a wind-down routine gives you the space and time to connect with yourself. Amongst all the fast-paced aspects of our lives, we may not have dedicated time to come back to ourselves, our priorities and feelings: a wind-down routine creates dedicated time in which you can feel present and grounded.
As you create your own personal wind-down routine, here are a few yoga poses that you can try:
Reclining Hamstring Stretch
Bend one knee towards you and lengthen the leg to the ceiling, taking hold round the back of your leg. Gently bend and stretch your knee, feeling the stretch in the back of your leg. Only go as far as feels comfortable, and switch legs after a few breaths.
Happy Baby
Bring both knees in towards you, and send the soles of your feet to the ceiling, taking hold around the outside edges of your feet (or the back of your legs, if this is more comfortable). You can also rock gently side to side here, or straighten one leg or another.
Reclining Butterfly
Bring the soles of your feet together and allow the knees to fall outwards. From here, you can support your outside leg with your hands, or with pillows if more comfortable.
Try holding each pose for 10 deep breaths, alternating between poses whenever you feel ready to do so.
The point of a wind-down routine isn’t to add another thing to your day, it’s to give you a way of slowing down properly, so the day actually ends before you try to sleep.
Photography by Robyn Halliday.
