Changing your sleep schedule

In addition to moonymaid’s comment on a post below, I’ve gotten a couple of emails asking about how to change your wake-up time to add in morning yoga, so here’s my two cents.

First, have a well-defined goal. Do you want to get up 30 minutes early in order to meditate? Are you aiming to do a 90-minute yoga practice? Do you need time to journal afterwards? Knowing this is essential to both planning and motivation.

Second, know how much sleep you need, and how long it takes you to get to sleep. Trying to function on less sleep than you need is not good. And if you don’t change your bed time to correspond with your wake-up, the whole thing will collapse once your body starts to insist on the rest it needs. Also, know how long it takes you to wake up enough to be active.

Third, anticipate obstacles. Do you have a vacation or other event coming up that might interfere with your plan? How do you feel about bright lights first thing in the morning? Are you particular about temperature or clothing? Do you tend to fall asleep in savasana? For those who don’t do Ashtanga, should you plan your sequence of asanas ahead of time? Will you need props in the morning that you would otherwise do without?

Fourth, set up a time table. I like checklists, schedules, and the like because they’re visible reminders of my decisions. Fill it in on a calendar or post it on a separate sheet, but be sure it’s very visible and has specific dates and goals. Revise if you need to, but put that in writing too.

It sounds like moonymaid’s work schedule is changing, so she’s going to be getting up much earlier than usual now. For me, too many changes at once make it less likely that I’ll stick with a new plan, so in her place I’d get used to the new work schedule before trying to add in morning yoga or meditation.

Here’s my time table:

Week 1 — move alarm back 15 minutes. I used doing the dishes in the morning as a place-holder of sorts. It was both active and necessary, so it kept me from hitting the snooze while getting me used to doing more in the morning.

Week 2 — move alarm back an additional 15 minutes. Continued doing dishes, and added other small, quiet chores (like dusting and sweeping) to each morning to keep the time occupied.

Week 3 — move alarm back an additional 15 minutes, and move bed-time back to 9. This is when I started actually doing yoga in the morning. It is also when I let my friends and family know about my schedule change so that they would know not to call me after nine.

[currently at end of week 4]

Week 7 or 8 — move alarm back an additional 15 minutes. This is up in the air because I’m going on vacation for parts of week 6 and 7 and how I handle the alarm move will depend on whether I maintain a fairly early wake-up. There will also be a time zone difference to contend with.

Week 12 — move alarm back an additional 15 minutes. At this point I will be getting up one hour and fifteen minutes earlier than when I started, and I plan on keeping to this wake-up time through the winter. If I decide to move it back more, that will happen in the spring when the days are long again.