Exercise Before Sleep

Sleep is not just a mental process — it is physical permission to stop holding on. In this episode of Night Shift, we explore how to deactivate the body before bed using restorative yoga, Yoga Nidra, progressive muscle relaxation, and gentle evening movement. The goal is not to exercise harder, but to help the nervous system release tension, lower arousal, and signal that the day is over. 

Transcript

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Welcome back to Night Shift with Justin S. King, How to Transform Your Life One Night at a Time. Tonight I am covering the fourth part of the Miracle Morning and how to apply that to your eating routine. Fourth part of Elrod's Miracle Morning is exercise. And I recently saw a video that mentioned that you're not going to get good sleep in the evening unless you exercise during the day. Hal's exercise portion of his routine is to prime you into a state of confidence and energy, not specifically to have a full workout. But in my evening routine, in the billion dollar sleep evening routine, there is a section where you are going to make sure you incorporate a physical aspect into your evening routine. While a morning exercise is for activation, evening exercise would be for deactivation. And you can choose several different ways to deactivate your physical body through movement. That can be a simple evening walk. It could be restorative yoga, which is slow supported poses where you are not trying to stretch hard or perform. It could be yoga nidra, which is lying down and following a guided body scan, almost like rehearsing sleep before sleep. It could also be progressive bustle relaxation where you gently tighten one part of the body, one muscle at a time, and then release it, moving from your feet to your legs, your hands, your shoulders, face. Point is to engage your physical body in some sort of calming, deactivating exercise. Things to look out for in terms of exercise is to avoid working hard workouts close to bedtime. You want to finish your workout at least two to three hours, specifically depending on the intensity, two to three hours before bed. So tonight, the simple night shift is to pick a simple physical movement or practice that you can incorporate into your eating routine. If you want to check out Yoga Nidra or restorative yoga, you can jump on to YouTube and search those. That is it for tonight's episode of Night Shift. My name is Justin S. King, and I help entrepreneurs find peace tonight, tomorrow, and for the rest of their lives through sleep optimization, emotion regulation, and discovering their purpose. Good night.