How do you sleep in bed? Like a T-Rex with arms bent in front of you? Or a mountain climber, with one knee almost touching your chest? 

According to Liz Tenuto, also known as the Workout Witch, the position you adopt can tell a great deal about you – and the way you deal with stress.

It was Charlotte Bronte who wrote that, ‘a ruffled mind makes a restless pillow’ and it’s long been known that stress can have a hugely detrimental effect on your ability to get a good night’s sleep.

Based in California, 40-year-old Liz is a leading expert on ways to reduce it, teaching her 1.6million followers on Instagram and 2.2million on TikTok, including actresses Emma Stone and Debra Messing, why they sleep as they do – and how to ‘reconnect to the body’ to achieve a better quality of shut-eye.

Having suffered from insomnia and chronic pain from the age of ten, Liz explains that, ‘over the years I tried many things – Western doctors, holistic paths – but nothing produced lasting results for me’. 

She was 22 when she discovered something called somatic exercises, ‘and I was pretty desperate to feel better by this point’.

Liz Tenuto, aka the Workout Witch, teaches her Instagram and TikTok followers, how to ‘reconnect to the body’ to achieve a better quality of shut-eye

The sleep position you adopt can tell a great deal about you – and the way you deal with stress

Soma is the Greek word for ‘body’ and somatic exercises, explains Liz, ‘are really gentle exercises that you can do in bed or on the floor that release pent-up stress and tension out of your body and bring your nervous system back into balance.

‘After my first lesson [in somatic exercises] I felt so much better, I cried out of relief. After three lessons, I was starting to sleep well for the first time in 12 years.’

Why The Workout Witch? ‘Initially, I was renting a small space at the back of a large gym to treat clients who had tried everything from yoga to acupuncture to treat things such as sleep issues,’ she says, ‘and one client joked, “You’re like this witch that people have to seek through the depths of the forest in order to be healed”. I just thought that was so catchy, I called myself The Workout Witch.’

Here, Liz identifies five unhealthy sleep behaviours we shouldn’t ignore – including common positions in bed – and the exercises we can do to counteract them.

YOU ARE COVERED IN SWEAT IN THE MORNING

This is often due to high cortisol. Cortisol is the primary stress hormone in your body, so whenever you experience stress, your adrenal glands pump out cortisol to prepare you to fight or flee.

If you’re waking up covered in sweat, your body is essentially trying to expel some of the excess toxins that are building up because of a harmful imbalance of too much cortisol.

High amounts of cortisol can also cause you to wake up with a puffy face or feel bloated because it causes fluid retention in your body. You may also have clumps of hair falling out in the shower or experience a lot of tossing and turning in the middle of the night. Basically, your body is fighting itself.

The first exercise I generally teach people is a very gentle rocking exercise where you lay on your stomach, stack your hands on top of each other and rest your forehead on top of your hands. Start to shift your hips from right to left in the laziest, least ambitious way possible. Do this about 50 times and then pause and roll over.

This exercise utilises a concept called bilateral stimulation, which naturally starts to deactivate your fight-or-flight response and activates your rest-and-digest state. Movement is key in terms of managing stress and releasing it from the body.

YOU SLEEP LIKE A T-REX OR A MOUNTAIN CLIMBER

Sleeping with T-Rex arms is when you’re on your side with your arms and wrists bent, your fingers curled underneath your chin and your elbows resting against your torso. This is a self-protective position, with your arms guarding your throat and chest, which generally means your nervous system is overwhelmed.

It’s an attempt to soothe yourself while going to sleep, but ultimately it’s holding a lot of tension in your body which can lead to wrist pain and frequent stomach aches.

The mountain climber position is where you’re on your stomach and have your head turned to the side and one knee bent upwards. When your knee is bent up like that, the muscles in your abdomen and pelvis remain slightly activated while you’re going to sleep, so your body feels like it’s going to be ready to react at any moment.

Everyone experiences stress in their lives, but if you’ve been sleeping in these positions for longer than two or three weeks, that signifies that you may be stuck in fight-or-flight.

An exercise I recommend is lying on your back with your arms by your side and your legs long, with your ankles hip-width apart. Start to tap your toes together gently and repeat for about 60 seconds. That releases a lot of tension out of your body and means you’re less likely to sleep in those positions.

YOU WAKE UP A LOT/FIND IT HARD TO FALL ASLEEP

Waking up a lot during the night is often a sign that someone is experiencing hyper-vigilance, which is generally an effect of trauma.

When you’re in this state, you wake up at the slightest noise or change in light level – your brain is still scanning for potential threats.

Having a hard time falling asleep can also stem from hyper-vigilance or it can also be another sign of high cortisol.

Cortisol is supposed to spike naturally in the morning to help us get up and then drop over the course of the day. If you can’t fall asleep, it’s often because your body is still pumping out this stress hormone.

Lie on your back again, with your legs long and ankles hip-width apart. Place the heels of your hands on top of your eyes and allow them to sink down into your eyes.

Hold that position for about 30 seconds to a minute and see how relaxed your belly and your jaw can be. This exercise not only relaxes the body but also the optic nerve, which can really help reverse the effects of sleep-disturbing blue light, which you absorb while doom scrolling on your phone.

YOU GRIND YOUR TEETH DURING THE NIGHT

When you go into fight-or-flight, you may find that your jaw starts clenching and your psoas muscle activates. The psoas is the long, deep, internal muscle that connects your torso to your pelvis and automatically contracts when you experience stress or anxiety.

The trouble occurs when you tighten your psoas so often it becomes your normal and you literally change your physiology. Even during your sleep you’re still clenching your jaw – and that’s what causes the teeth-grinding.

A great exercise for this is to sit on the edge of your bed with your ankles hip-distance apart and both feet on the floor. Use the first two fingers of each hand to grab the top of your ear and pull the top of your ear up.

Hold your ears like that and allow your mouth to open and then slowly start to nod your head a little bit down and then bring it back up. Repeat that about six times with your mouth open, like you’re almost drooling, take a rest and then repeat that exercise for two or three rounds. You’ll notice after doing this exercise there’s a profound difference in your jaw tension.

AND TWO GOOD SLEEP POSITIONS… 

On your left side

Sleeping on your left side where your legs are stretched out long so you’re not in the foetal position and your arms are not curled into you in the T-Rex position is a really good position for brain health, digestion, heart health, lymphatic drainage and back pain.

It enhances the efficiency of your glymphatic system – your brain’s waste-cleaning system – which means you have better flow of the cerebrospinal fluid that clears out brain toxins accumulated during waking hours.

With digestion, both your stomach and pancreas sit on the left side of your body so when you sleep on your left side, gravity helps the food move more easily from your stomach into your small intestine and helps your digestion function at its best.

 On your back

Sleeping on your back with your legs long in front of you and your arms down by your side is a great position – so that means no mummy or vampire arms where your arms are crossed over your body in a self-protective position, or with your hands underneath your body, which carries a lot of tension.

Sleeping on your back is good for posture, great for headaches, or if you have any kind of sinus or nasal congestion or joint pain, and supports organ function. It also minimises the wrinkles you inevitably get when one side of the face is pressed against the pillow all night, and prevents any kind of facial asymmetry.

If you have trouble sleeping on your back you can do an exercise called progressive muscle relaxation. Lie on your back and squeeze your feet muscles as hard as you can for about five seconds and release. Then squeeze the muscles in your feet and calves and release. Then squeeze your feet, calf and thigh muscles and release. Then feet, calves, thighs, hips – squeeze for five seconds and release.

Go all the way through your body, squeezing your shoulders, hands and even your face before you release. It allows you to release a lot of physical tension out of your body, which is often the reason why people aren’t comfortable sleeping on their back. The whole exercise takes about two minutes and by the end, you’ll probably just fall asleep. That’s always a great sign!

• theworkoutwitch.com @theworkoutwitch