Forget sleep. Doing this for 10 minutes a day is giving me all the energy I need

I'd like to say that I've been struggling to get enough sleep for a few months or years, but the truth is that I've had this challenge most of my life. One of my mother's favorite stories from my childhood centers on the night I stood at the door long after midnight, cheerfully waving dinner party guests goodbye like I was the hostess of the New Year's bash my parents threw. I was two years old. Aside from being a professional, a parent, and living a few blocks from the home where my mom's dinner parties now take place, my attitude about sleep is not that different. If there's something going on -- a phone conversation, a late-night movie, a new blog post going up, a work deadline -- I am probably going to be wide awake, waving, and smiling at whatever is happening and whoever is still up at the same time.

The problem is that I really need more sleep than I get. I can't take a toddler-sized nap and I never seem to make up for the many years of sleep I've lost along the way to my mid-thirties. I've spent the last six months trying to make a habit of evening rituals, self-imposed bedtimes, and anything that will lure me away from the laptop and into my bed.

I tried and tried and tried. And I would do great for a week or so, fall off the sleep wagon, re-commit and relapse all over again. It felt crazier than being chronically sleep-deprived, to be honest. At least when I was getting a consistent five hours of sleep (and really, I need 8 or more), I didn't feel like my energy level was up and then down and then up again. It was low, but it was steady.

Then, two weeks ago, I just gave up. I decided to forget my efforts to get more sleep. I was feeling like a failure and still exhausted and it just wasn't working. Instead, I shifted my focus from getting myself into bed to what happens when I get up in the morning.

If I couldn't get it together in the evening (or early a.m., which is when I really am hitting the sack), then I could at least make my mornings better. And with that, I decided to start doing yoga. Every single morning.

The crazy and wonderful thing is that I've not only committed to my new yoga practice, I now crave it. The key, I think, is that I am keeping it as simple as I possibly can.

I started with an A.M. yoga DVD that I dug out from a basket of dusty movies and fitness videos. It was familiar -- it was my 20-minute escape at a time when my home was full of unbearable stress. I remembered the class helping me to breathe deeper in the midst of a suffocating time. It felt right to revisit Rodney Yee, the calm and compelling teacher, for a short, relatively easy class at a time when my stress was peaking again.

Then I moved on to another A.M. yoga class I found OnDemand through Exercise TV (here's a schedule of what's on cable when), and am trying out new morning practices I've found there, in old copies of Yoga Journal I have stashed away, and from sequences I remember from a studio class I loved last year. During the week, I need the guidance and discipline of a teacher on the screen telling me what to do and for how long. But on the weekend, it is nice to go with the flow of poses from magazine pages or memory. Some mornings, I do 10 minutes of more heart-pumping yoga, and other classes are 20 minutes of slower-paced poses. They are all active, though, and all stretch me out, get the synapses firing and blood circulating.

Some wonderful things are already happening in the two weeks I've been doing yoga daily.

First, my 4-year old son joins me most mornings, if not for the whole class then for parts of it. Together, we are building our self-care skills, making a habit of being active, and breathing deeper. I've noticed that getting him moving after that is easier and he doesn't complain as much about putting on his clothes or hurrying out of the house for school. It probably doesn't hurt that I emerge less rushed and more calm, either.

Second, I have noticed my stress level drop. It's not that the stress has dissipated. It's just that I am giving the things that make me anxious less of my energy. I had one day last week where I got all worked up over something pretty small. Later that night as I thought about the day and how exahusted all that consternation left me, I realized I'd forgotten to do yoga that morning. Yoga's not solving the stress, certainly. But it is making me better prepared to deal with it and that is obvious already.

Third, my body feels better. I'm not doing anything complicated, high level or rigorous, but I am stretching out and working my achey muscles. As a result, my shoulders are pulled back and my posture is better. I can feel the core work in my abs. It also feels good to get even a minimal amount of exercise in.

Fourth, my energy level is boosted. I feel really ready for my day when I've finished the final relaxation portion of the morning yoga practice. I feel centered and still energized. Dare I say that I feel as much - if not more - refreshed than I do after getting eight hours of sleep.

I do know that I need more rest and that 10 or 20 minutes of yoga cannot replace that. I will definitely address the sleep again (and likely, again and again and again) soon. For now and until I can more thoroughly get to what's happening at night, a minimal amount of morning yoga is making my days so much better.

How do you get going in the morning? Does it make up for lack of sleep at night?


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