While the nightly news might tell you that the best cure for insomnia is sleeping pills, many health experts have suggested that a better way to get a sound night’s sleep is by practicing yoga.

There are two easy ways to learn more about sleep and how stress affects it: yoga and meditation. Both focus on how our thoughts and emotions affect our physical health, and how learning to quiet our mind can improve our sleep quality. When you learn about the effects of stress on your body through these methods, it will become easier to recognize when stress is affecting your sleep.

The long-term impacts of physical stress can leave your body in knots that make it hard to fall asleep, even when your mind is at ease. Fortunately, yoga can help with these physical pains as well by gently working muscles and stretching tendons and ligaments that can get tight throughout the day. Also, because of the slow and gentle pace of yoga, it won’t make it harder for you to fall asleep if you do it right before bed like other forms of exercise can. Just make sure that you don’t stretch too hard and hurt yourself any further.

When your body is tired, it should be easy to fall asleep. But sometimes you just can’t switch off — could it be because you’re too wired from caffeine, maybe traveling across time zones,  adjusting the clocks or just trying to go to sleep earlier? Even when you don’t feel wound up, yoga before bed can be a great way to unwind a little further. If you’re not used to yoga, you might find it curing pains that you didn’t know you had!

In addition to improving sleep quality, yoga can also help you understand your mind and body so that you can get to the root of why you’re having trouble sleeping in the first place.

Yoga can help alleviate the physical symptoms of stress, but if you’re experiencing severe stress and are unable to live your life normally due to anxiety, you should see a healthcare provider as you may need medication.