7 relaxing STRETCHES to help you sleep

stretching before you go to bed can be a great way of improving your quality of sleep so follow me on a short routine for a blissful [Music] night hi everyone and welcome to exercise for health and today we are chilling out and winding down with some gentle relaxed stretching to not only help you sleep but to also reduce the stiffness feeling the f morning you can do these in your bed although I will be demonstrating them on the floor where I have more space to film so empty your bladder brush your teeth and take me to your bedroom wait that sounds wrong I mean watch me do it no that sounds even worse just follow me with these stretches right then we're going to start our stretching routine on all fours initially so if you get yourself so you're on your knees and on your hands and we're going to go into a child's pose so the movement from there is just relax your feet behind you and you're going to take your bottom down slowly as though you're taking it towards the hills of your feet and then once you've reached your end of range and you can't go any further just gently reach the hands forwards on your bed as far as you can and then just let the body sink down so try and remain completely relaxed while we're doing these stretches so we're try not to activate too many muscles to get the stretch but just hold it in that position Breathe In and Out in a nice slow deep relaxed manner just to come to gravity let the body just drift down into your bed so we're going to hold each stretch for about 30 seconds good if you want to you can always reach the hands out a little bit further okay and then bring yourself forwards a little bit and then drop the elbows down to the floor so the next one we're going to do is thread the needle so for this one we're going to take one hand underneath the opposite arm reach out as far as you possibly can and then just relax the head and that shoulder down into your bed which is just twisting the thoracic spine and again just hold it there nice and relaxed just let gravity take over your body so you can just sink down into your bed good right let's switch over so bring that hand back out so elbow on the bed other hand this time take it underneath the arm reach out as far as you can and then when you can't go any further just let that shoulder drop down and the head drop down into your bed and relax good right br bring that one back out we're going to go over onto our backs now cuz we're going to do a knees to chest so find yourself in a comfortable position first of all lead on your back so you've got your spine in a neutral position just just where it feels normal and relaxed for you feet close to your bottom with the knees bent so we're going to bring the knees up to the chest first of all so what I want you to do is lift the feet up off your bed either grab hold of the the knees or underneath the back of the knees if that feels easier and you're just going to bring the knees up towards the chest so you may find that the lower back just starts to lift off the bed a little bit this is slightly more of an active stretch but again just try and relax as best you can as you're bringing the knees up towards the chest good okay release off let the feet drop down onto your bed bring the feet and the knees together for the next one we're going to drop the knees to one side so we can get some rotation in the lumber spine so just allow your head to drop back onto your bed so your head's completely relaxed let the knees then drop over to one side as far as you feel comfortable and then with the opposite arm you're going to reach out the opposite way so you can generate a little bit of a stretch into the chest and the shoulders at the same time so knees are going one way the opposite arms going the other way and again just try and completely relax down into your mattress good right let's bring the knees back up to the middle bring that arm back in let's take the knees the opposite way so as you're dropping the knees down make sure the shoulder blades are staying flat onto your bed and then opposite arm reach out the opposite way let it just relax so you'll feel some stretch into the lower part of your back and then you'll feel the stretch across the chest and the shoulder on the arm that's out so try not to hold your breath while we're doing these stretches focus on relaxing your breath breathing good okay bring the knees back up to the middle bring that arm back in so we're going to go into a butterfly stretch next so keeping the feet together you're just going to let the knees drop out to the sides so just let gravity take over on the knees so the knees are dropping down towards the bed keeping the feet together hands you can just relax on your tummy and again head back just let the body sink down and the legs are sinking down as you succumb to gravity [Music] good bring the knees back up hopefully haven't fallen asleep yet so next one we're going to do is a figure four stretch so I want to take one foot up and across onto the opposite knee and then just think about having this knee going down away from you which will create a stretch around the side of the hip if you don't feel anything what you can do to increase it is you can just drop the support leg knee out to the side so you're taking this foot down towards your mattress and that'll just increase the stretch a little bit around the side of the hip so again just relax once you've got the position where you feel a slight stretch and relax your [Music] breathing good back up to the middle let's switch the feet over so same thing try and get this knee away from you as much as possible and if you need to increase the stretch then just drop the support leg knee out to the side so the foot's going down towards your mattress to increase the stretch and again once you feel it should be slightly uncomfortable sort of a nice feeling though just relax in that position [Music] good bring it back up to the middle okay bring that foot off and then this time now we're just going to let the legs go out straight and the last one we're going to finish off with I call it the hugger so what we're going to do is we're going to reach up towards the ceiling try and lift the shoulder blades up away from the bed Cross Your Arms over try and get elbow on top of elbow and then bend the elbows so your hands are come in either side of the shoulders to give yourself a hug and then again just relax in that position let the neck sink down into the [Music] bed good and now release the arms to let the arms drift down by the side of the body and then just relax I hope you are relaxed now and ready to sleep if so then please give it a like by clicking the Thumbs Up Button below and consider subscribing if you haven't already you can also check out the description below for ways that you can help support this channel but don't do that now thank you so much for watching and until next time stay active keep moving in and good night