21 Days To Better Sleep—This Program Is Your Ticket To A Better Bedtime Ritual
Sleep is just as important as eating healthily, staying hydrated, and getting our sweat on.
Tfoso
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November 13, 2023
Image by barre3 / Contributor November 13, 2023 After a rocky night of sleep, all bets are off. Getting that workout in, meeting a work deadline, staying in a good mood—suddenly, everyday goals feel like a hill to climb. And that’s because everything starts with sleep. It doesn’t matter how many greens we eat or how many supplements we take. Without quality sleep, we’re in for a long day. 
Are you getting quality sleep?
It’s not just about clocking eight hours. Sleep quality measures how well you’re sleeping during those hours. Aside from how groggy you might feel in the morning, it comes down to a few factors:
Sleep quality matters more than you might realize. Studies have shown that poor sleep quality is “significantly” associated with higher stress levels and mood disturbances.[1][2] Poor sleep can even predict lower levels of exercise.3 Like we said, it all starts with sleep… So what to do about it?
21 Days to Better Sleep
Getting to bed on time matters, but there’s so much more you can do for better rest. That’s why barre3 designed its 21 Days to Better Sleep program to target every category of sleep quality while elevating your evening ritual. Barre3 is known for efficient workouts that uniquely combine strength, cardio, and mindfulness, and their approach to sleep is just as effective. Through three weeks of audio and video content, this program centers around meditation, breathwork, and movement. Here’s why that totals better quality sleep.
Meditation
Meditation relieves mental stress, relaxes the body, and helps activate the parasympathetic nervous system, AKA “rest and digest.”4 Research has proven that plain and simple: meditation improves sleep quality.5 But the 21 Days to Better Sleep program teaches you how to do it with evidence-based tools like Yoga Nidra, gratitude meditation, and mantra meditation.
Yoga Nidra, a practice based on systematic body relaxation, has been proven to improve sleep duration and quality (even insomnia).6 Gratitude meditation, where you focus on positive emotions and things that you’re grateful for, has been connected to longer sleep duration and feeling refreshed in the morning.7 Lastly, mantra meditation, which involves mindfully repeating words or phrases, has been known for centuries to benefit sleep.8 Throughout this three week program, you’ll learn all three meditation practices to benefit your slumber (and beyond).
Image by barre3 / Contributor
Breathwork
Breathwork is having a moment right now, and for good reason. Breathwork encompasses practices that deliberately change breath patterns for varying benefits. Calming breathing techniques have the power to downregulate your nervous system—moving you from an excited or perhaps anxious state to a more relaxed state.921 Days to Better Sleep offers a variety of techniques, like box breathing and diaphragmatic breath, to support sleep quality. Once you experience the benefits, breathwork will earn its keep in your evening ritual.
Movement
We know, movement isn’t the first thing you think of when it comes to a pre-bedtime routine—but hear us out. Light exercise (like stretching and yoga) has actually been proven to improve sleep quality.10 For the “movement” component of its 21 Days to Better Sleep program, barre3 offers b3 Flow and b3 Stretch classes. As low-heat forms of movement, these classes help relax the nervous system and restore your body without making you sweat.
Get ready to sleep tight
All together, meditation, breathwork, and movement calm the mind, soothe the body, and guide the nervous system into a sleep-friendly state. The 21 Days to Better Sleep program makes these three practices accessible but also requires less than 15 minutes per day. All you have to do is subscribe to barre3 online. You’ll get access to exclusive content like 21 Days to Better Sleep, but also 600+ on-demand workouts, curated collections, and more.
Sleep is just as important as eating healthily, staying hydrated, and getting our sweat on. Because when we’re deep in slumber, our body gets a chance to heal, grow, and balance. But when we’re up in the middle of the night staring at the ceiling, sleep feels far from simple. So—meditation, breathwork, and movement for quality sleep, all in one place? Sounds like a sweet dream.
