Legs-Up-the-Wall (Viparita Karani)

Why it works

Get your legs above your heart and gravity does the work, pulling pooled venous blood and fluid back out of your calves and feet, decongesting tissue that swells after a day on your feet and easing the heavy, restless feeling in your legs that fragments sleep before it even starts. More importantly, the mild inversion and the fact that your body is doing zero work stimulates the baroreceptors in your neck and chest and shifts you toward the parasympathetic, rest-and-digest side of your nervous system, which drops your heart rate and blood pressure and quiets the exact sympathetic buzz that keeps people wired at midnight. Your spine stays neutral, the floor and wall hold your whole body, and no muscle has to work at all, which is why this barely counts as a stretch. It is a nervous-system reset that gets your body ready to fall asleep.

How to do it

1. Sit sideways next to a clear wall with one hip touching the baseboard, knees bent.
2. Roll onto your back as you swing both legs up the wall, shuffling your seat close so your sitting bones rest near or against the wall.
3. Let your arms fall open at your sides, palms up, and allow the legs to rest heavy against the wall with a soft, comfortable bend if the hamstrings feel tight.
4. Slide a cushion or folded towel under your hips if you want a gentle pelvic lift, and let your low back settle flat into the floor.
5. Close your eyes and breathe slowly through the nose, exhaling a little longer than you inhale, for the full hold.

Dose: 1 hold of 5-15 minutes, nightly as the last step before you go to bed.

⚠ Skip or clear with your clinician if you have uncontrolled high blood pressure, glaucoma, or are in later pregnancy (lying flat can compress the vena cava). Come down slowly by bending the knees to the chest and rolling to one side to avoid a head-rush or dizziness.

Target areas