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It’s that time of year again when the clocks fall back just one hour yet make you feel disoriented and disgruntled for weeks afterward. Whether you find yourself sluggish and slow in the mornings or wired late at night, daylight saving time can wreak havoc with your vibe.
That disruption is due to the reliance of your brain and body on circadian rhythms. Like an internal clock ticking away, this 24-hour cycle governs not only your patterns of sleep and waking but your hormone levels, alertness, physical energy or lethargy, body temperature, even appetite. It’s as if this rhythm literally creates the canvas on which you paint your life.
When your internal clock is out of sync with the one on the wall, these critical biorhythms are disrupted. And in recent years, there’s been increasing concern about the various ways this disruption seems to harm your health. But the more we learn about it, the better we understand how to counteract it.
When Is Daylight Saving Time?
The clocks fall back an hour on Sunday, November 3, 2024.
Why Daylight Saving Time Disrupts Everything
Research points to small but significant increases in the incidence of car accidents and an array of health-related complications, including those related to pregnancy and childbirth, flare-ups of immune-related disorders including colitis, and cardiovascular issues such as heart attacks, atrial fibrillation, and stroke.
The spring transition seems to prompt more issues related to physical health than the autumn one, perhaps because turning your clock forward effectively means you get less sleep. However, there is evidence that indicates mood disorders increase more after the autumn shift. Research similarly suggests that adolescents suffer more frequent lapses of attention following daylight saving time.
No matter what your motivation, it pays to recalibrate your biorhythms as quickly as possible following daylight saving time. But how?
How Yoga Can Help With Daylight Saving Time
Although the biggest determinant of your circadian rhythm is light, whether natural light from being outdoors or artificial light from your environment (including your devices), your internal state can also be influenced by your stress levels and your physical activity. Every little nudge you can make in your everyday life will help.
Just as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, what you find to be soothing and stimulating are quite personal and relative terms. They’re shaped by your experiences, expectations, and the resting state of your nervous system, which means you’ll need to lean on poses or practices that take you in the desired direction of amping your mood or quieting your thoughts.
Ways to Unwind So You Can Sleep
Since sleep is so crucial to physical and mental health, it makes sense to use your yoga practice to help you downregulate in the evening as you ready yourself for sleep. Light exposure is crucial, so dim the lights and either close your eyes or relax your gaze.
Lean into practices that feel soothing and settling, such as:
Ways to Be More Alert in the Morning
If you prefer to practice yoga in the morning, no problem. No matter how you feel when the alarm goes off, certain types of poses and practices can lend you a quick hit of energy and alertness. Once again, light is crucial. Make your space light and bright; while you shouldn’t look directly into bright light, you can help your circadian clock adjust by keeping your eyes open and focused.
Emphasize practices that enliven and stimulate, like:
Other Simple Ways to Feel Like Yourself Again
Perhaps more essential than specific poses or practice is that it be ones that you like enough to actually unroll your mat and practice. So if the idea of a “vigorous” morning practice doesn’t appeal to you, opt for your go-to stretches somewhere with ample light. (Or turn on the lights and get back into bed!) Feel a late-morning or mid-afternoon slump overtaking you? Try a minute or two of quiet breathwork at your desk.
If the only thing that helps you shake off your work day is an early evening hot vinyasa class, do it. The most important thing is that you move, although try to include some simple modifications, such as lengthening your exhalations when you’re trying to slow down or letting your eyes drift closed in an end-of-practice stretch.
Daylight saving is disrupting enough, so no one’s telling you to shake things up even more by throwing away your existing yoga routine. Yoga is about practice, not perfection and consistency over magnitude. Even one small adjustment to the way you approach your time on the mat could be enough to help you forget that the clocks even changed.
