Sleep Under Yoga Blocks for Bag-Free Eyes

by Alexandra Samuel

We've all picked up a magical cream, or an eye mask or sliced up raw veggies in the name of less baggage (around our eyes, that is). Sadly, no matter how many jarred-miracles you use, there's one enemy to looking bright eyed in the AM that's impossible to ditch: gravity.

Yup. Gravity. When you lie flat in bed, fluids in your body pool around your eyes leaving 'em puffy and swollen-looking in the AM.

Instead of sucking it up, you can turn the beauty foe into your beauty BFF by simply elevating your head, which will cause all those gnarly fluids to draw down into the rest of your body. This is also a great move if you get dark circles that may originate from sinus issues versus discoloration from skin pigmentation. Propping your head higher than the rest of your body helps your sinuses drain more efficiently which makes you less congested.

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The only problem with this seemingly-easy fix is forcing yourself to do something while you're unconscious.

A ton of derms will recommend propping an extra pillow or two under your head, but I've never met anyone who actually did that and slept well. In fact, I inevitably toss the extra pillows out of the way overnight when I'm not really awake.

So what's the answer, if you can't just become a back sleeper overnight? Elevate the front-end of the bed. Stay with me, because I'm not talking about major construction here. In fact, my doc told me to do this during a particularly gnarly ear-infection (so random, I know) and I've never slept better or woken up with less-puffy eyes, like, ever.

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It's super easy -- and cheap -- to pull off, too: If you have a few yoga blocks, bricks or wood blocks at home, those are perfect. Otherwise, you can use a stack of old textbooks (duct-taped together so they don't slide all over the places) or really anything that you have two of and don't need -- just make sure they are the same height. Before bed, slip one brick/block/stack under each leg of your bed on the end where you put your head. Then, give your bed a push or two to make sure it's steady.

That's it. Your heads elevated but you'll never know the difference. In fact, I think this is more comfortable than how I was sleeping before the ear infection went down.

Do you have any no-product de-puffing tricks? Tweet them @AESam and @SELFMagazine.

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