Evening yoga

Evening yoga, as written here, is thirty minutes of thirteen items done on a mat at the end of the working day, some hours before you intend to sleep. It is not a bedtime practice. It is the practice that closes the day: it takes the desk out of your shoulders, opens the hips that sitting has shut, and finishes with the legs up a wall and five minutes flat on the floor.

The distinction from the site's other evening page matters, so here it is plainly. The bedtime sequence is fifteen minutes, mostly done in bed, with no standing at all, and it exists to get you from awake to asleep. This one is thirty minutes on a mat, includes two standing poses and a squat, and is done at seven or eight in the evening rather than at half past ten. Do this one after work. Do that one in bed. Doing both on the same night is not a problem and doing this one at eleven o'clock is.

Who it is for: anybody who finishes a working day wound up rather than tired out, which describes most people who come to my evening class. Level beginner. You need a mat, a wall with about a metre of clear skirting board, one or two cushions and a folded blanket, and thirty minutes when nobody needs you.

If your evening problem is specifically that you cannot get to sleep, read this page for the practice and the anxiety page for the breath work, which is where most of that particular benefit comes from in my experience.

An evening sequence runs the opposite way round from a morning one, and that is the whole design. A morning practice climbs: sit, warm, stand, strengthen, rest. This one descends: sit, warm, stand briefly, then hips, then floor, then the legs up the wall, then stillness. Once it goes down it does not come back up.

The two standing poses are third and sixth rather than at the end, and there are only two of them. They are in the sequence because most people arrive in the evening having been folded into a chair, and the body wants to be upright and open for a few minutes before it is asked to settle. Any more than two and the practice starts to warm you up, which is the one thing an evening sequence must not do.

The hips come next, in the middle, because that is where a day of sitting actually shows and because the squat and the seated wide knee position both need a body that has already moved. Putting Malasana at minute two, cold, is how people find out their ankles do not like it.

The lying twist is deliberately placed before the forward fold rather than after it. A twist unwinds the standing work and settles the lower back, and the long supported fold that follows is much more comfortable once the back has been unwound. Almost every sequence I see online has these two the other way round.

The single gentle back bend, a low bridge, sits at item eleven for a specific reason: it is a mild stimulant, so it goes before the two most settling items rather than after them. Then the legs up the wall, then five minutes of nothing. The last nine minutes of this practice ask nothing at all, and that ordering is the reason people describe it as different from a stretching session.

Print this and leave it wherever you change out of your work clothes. Thirty minutes, thirteen items, in this order.

1. Sukhasana, 2 minutes. Lights low, twenty breaths, longer out than in.
2. Marjariasana, 2 minutes. Fifteen very slow rounds.
3. Adho Mukha Svanasana, 90 seconds. Two holds of forty five seconds, knees bent.
4. Uttanasana, 90 seconds. Two holds, head heavy, come up slowly.
5. Trikonasana, 2 minutes. One minute a side, three quarter depth.
6. Virabhadrasana 2, 2 minutes. One minute a side. The last standing pose of the day.
7. Malasana, 90 seconds. Heels on a blanket, or sit on a low stool.
8. Baddha Konasana, 2 minutes. Cushion under each knee, no pressing down.
9. Supta Matsyendrasana, 2 minutes 30. Seventy five seconds a side, shoulders down.
10. Paschimottanasana, 2 minutes 30. Knees bent, cushion on the thighs, chest resting.
11. Setu Bandhasana, 2 minutes. Three low lifts of five breaths.
12. Viparita Karani, 3 minutes 30. Legs up the wall, hips a hand's width out.
13. Savasana, 5 minutes. Covered, palms up, counting exhales back from forty.

Two ways to change it. To make it calmer still, replace items 5 and 6 with two more minutes at the wall and nine rounds of bhramari, which many students find does more for a busy head than any posture. To make it a twenty minute practice, keep items 1, 2, 4, 8, 9, 12 and 13, which is the whole shape with the standing work removed.

A printable one page PDF of this plan is being prepared. It is not linked yet, and it will be a plain download when it is.

The same pose is not the same pose at eight in the evening, and these are the five differences I actually teach.

• Depth comes down, time goes up. Take three quarters of your morning range and hold it for twice as long. The body is warmer in the evening than in the morning, so it will let you go further, and going further is not what you are here for.
• Fewer standing poses. Two, not five. Standing work is warming and alerting, which is exactly right at seven in the morning and wrong at nine at night.
• No strong back bends and no inversions. A low bridge is the limit. Deep back bends are stimulating, and headstand or shoulderstand at this hour keeps a fair number of people awake, which the shoulderstand page says as well.
• The exhale gets longer. In the morning the breath is even. In the evening, make the out breath a little longer than the in breath, throughout. It is the only instruction in this practice that is doing anything to the nervous system directly.
• The rest is more than double. Two minutes of savasana in the morning, five in the evening, plus three and a half minutes with the legs up the wall before it. Nearly a third of this sequence is spent doing nothing, and that is the sequence working rather than the sequence padded.

Support everything you can. A cushion under the knees, a blanket under the heels, a cushion to rest the chest on in the forward fold. In the morning I ask people to hold their own weight. In the evening I want the floor and the props to hold it instead.

The list of what not to do in the evening is more useful than the list of what to do, and almost nobody publishes it.

• No strong back bends. No Ustrasana, no full bow, no wheel. They are stimulating and a good number of people cannot settle for an hour afterwards.
• No inversions. Headstand and shoulderstand are not evening practices. Legs up the wall is not an inversion in the same sense and it is in the sequence for that reason.
• No fast breathing. Kapalbhati and bhastrika are morning practices. In the evening use bhramari or a long slow exhale, or nothing at all.
• No vigorous flow, and no rounds of the sun salutation. If you want a moving practice at this hour, the moon salutation is built for it, slowly.
• Not on a full stomach. Leave two hours after dinner. There are two forward folds and a twist in here.
• Not in bed. The standing poses and the squat need a floor that does not give. If bed is where you want to practise, use the fifteen minute bedtime sequence instead.

Leave out or take advice before starting if you have an acute back injury, a disc problem or sciatica, in which case read the back pain page first. Leave out the squat entirely with a knee replacement or an unhappy knee, and sit on a stool for that item. Leave out the legs up the wall with uncontrolled high blood pressure, glaucoma or a recent eye operation, and lie with the knees bent over a cushion instead. In pregnancy after the first trimester the lying positions need changing rather than shortening.

One practical warning: come up slowly out of the fold and out of the legs up the wall. In a dim room, at the end of a long day, standing up quickly is how people feel faint.

To make it easier. Hands on a chair seat in the forward fold, fingertips on a wall in the triangle, a stool instead of a squat, a bolster or two cushions under the back in the bridge so it becomes a supported rest rather than a lift. That version is about twenty six minutes and it is where I would start anybody over sixty five.

If the floor is difficult. The first eight items all have a chair version, and the chair yoga sequence covers the same ground in twenty five minutes with nothing done on the floor. Add three minutes of sitting still at the end and you have an evening practice.

To make it longer rather than harder, which is the right direction for an evening. Take the legs up the wall to six minutes, the savasana to ten, and the supported forward fold to four. That is a forty minute practice and every extra minute has been spent on being still, which is what you want at this hour. Replacing the savasana with twenty minutes of yoga nidra is the other good way to lengthen it.

If you are practising after a run or a gym session, cut items 5 and 6, because your legs have had enough, and double the time in the hips and the lying twist. That version is the best use of this sequence I know and it is what I would tell a runner to do at nine at night.

Carefully, because this is the claim everybody makes. What research exists is about yoga in general rather than about this sequence, and it is reasonably encouraging.

A systematic review and meta-analysis of nineteen randomised trials in 1,832 women with sleep problems found a significant improvement in sleep quality with yoga, with longer programmes doing better than shorter ones, and with women who did not have cancer or menopausal symptoms benefiting most. A meta-analysis of randomised trials of yoga in older adults without a specific condition found improved sleep quality against inactive controls, alongside better mood and lower body flexibility. In a small randomised trial of eight weeks of gentle yoga in older women with restless legs syndrome, the yoga group improved substantially more than controls in sleep quality, insomnia, anxiety, perceived stress and blood pressure, though with only eighteen women completing it that is a preliminary finding rather than a settled one.

None of that studied this thirty minute sequence, and none of it is a treatment for insomnia. What I can add from teaching is narrower and I think more honest: the students who report the biggest change in their sleep are the ones for whom this practice replaced an hour on a phone, and the ones who report nothing are usually lying awake about something specific, which no sequence of postures will touch.

If sleep is genuinely the problem, three practical things beyond the postures. Do the practice two to three hours before bed rather than immediately before. Keep the lights low throughout, including for the printed plan. And if it persists for weeks, see a doctor: persistent sleeplessness has causes that yoga does not address.

Four evenings a week for a month, honestly reported.

Week one. The thirty minutes will feel long and you will be tempted to skip the last nine minutes. That temptation is the whole reason the last nine minutes are written into the plan with timings.

Week two. The hips are what change first, and the squat is the visible marker. People who started on a stool are usually on a folded blanket by the end of the second week. The shoulders after the downward dog are the second thing people notice, particularly desk workers.

Week three. The practice stops being exercise. This is the point at which most students tell me they have started looking forward to it, and it is also when the evening itself starts to shift, in the sense that dinner and bed happen earlier.

Week four onwards. The lying twist reaches noticeably further with less effort, and the five minutes of stillness stops feeling like a long time. What does not change: an evening practice does not make you flexible any faster than a morning one, it will not change your weight, and if you have a stiff lower back from years of sitting, a month is a start rather than a result. For that specifically, the twenty minute hips and lower back sequence does more of the work.

What each item is doing in this particular sequence, which is not always what it is best known for. The full teaching on each is on its own pose page, linked from the table above.

1. Sukhasana, 2 minutes

Twenty breaths with a longer exhale than inhale, in a room with the lights already low. This is the item that tells the body which kind of practice this is.

2. Marjariasana, 2 minutes

Fifteen very slow rounds. Half the speed of a morning practice, and the range does not matter.

3. Adho Mukha Svanasana, 90 seconds

The only item that loads the arms. It is here to unload the shoulders and the upper back after a day at a keyboard, so knees well bent and spine long.

4. Uttanasana, 90 seconds

Two holds of forty five seconds with the head hanging. In the evening the value is in the head being heavy rather than in the hamstrings lengthening.

5. Trikonasana, 2 minutes

The sides of the body, at three quarter depth, one minute a side. Chest turning up, hand on the shin.

6. Virabhadrasana 2, 2 minutes

The last standing pose of the day and the only strength in the sequence. One minute a side and out before the thigh shakes.

7. Malasana, 90 seconds

The squat, for the hips and the lower back, heels supported. A stool is a full version of this item for anybody whose knees or ankles object.

8. Baddha Konasana, 2 minutes

The inner thighs and the groin, with a cushion under each knee and no pressing down. Two minutes of leaving it alone does more than thirty seconds of persuasion.

9. Supta Matsyendrasana, 2 minutes 30

The lying twist. It unwinds the standing work and settles the lower back, and it is placed before the forward fold rather than after it for that reason.

10. Paschimottanasana, 2 minutes 30

A supported forward fold: knees bent, cushion on the thighs, chest resting on the cushion. Long and supported, not deep.

11. Setu Bandhasana, 2 minutes

The one gentle back bend, low, three lifts of five breaths. Mildly stimulating, which is why it comes before the two settling items and not after them.

12. Viparita Karani, 3 minutes 30

Legs up the wall, hips a hand's width from the skirting. The item students ask about most and the one that most reliably changes how the legs feel after a day standing or sitting.

13. Savasana, 5 minutes

Five minutes, covered, counting exhales backwards from forty. Falling asleep here is allowed. Getting up and going straight to a screen wastes the twenty five minutes before it.