Last time I shared my sleep ritual—attachment, ear plugs and all. This week I consider sleep and yoga under the tutelage of Ann Dyer, a yoga teacher in Oakland, California, who Yoga Journal calls the “near-perfect sleep guru.” Ann hosts as many as 10 “snor-a-thons” a year, during which she uses asana, chanting, and meditation to help people fall asleep. She is a senior faculty member and teaching associate of Rodney Yee at The Piedmont Yoga Studio. Ann’s training is rooted in the Iyengar tradition, complemented by 10 years studying Nada Brahma, yoga of sound, with Mukesh Desai.

New West: How did you come to specialize in sleep yoga?

Ann Dyer: I had a student in my class, Robert deStefano, who owns Sleep Garden. He approached me about doing a DVD for insomnia. To be honest, I wasn’t thinking about insomnia at the time. What I was thinking about was the level of exhaustion in my classes and among my peers, and I was trying to address this in my asana yoga classes. What I realized was that insomnia was a few exits down from not resting. Read More