If you suffer chronic or occasional insomnia, yoga may be one way to overcome it and allow you to bypass the sleeping pills. Slow, deep, rhythmic breathing can relax the body and mind and help you assimilate stress. This conscious breathing style is learned rather than instinctual.

  The Mayo Clinic published in its newsletter that one of the best ways to learn this type of breathing and get more quality sleep is yoga, as participants focus on the flow of diaphragmatic breathing throughout the practice. Once you learn to use the breath as a tool in a yoga class it becomes readily available to you any time of the day.

  The National Institute of Health claims regular yoga practice can help reduce anxiety, slow breathing, lower blood pressure, alter brain waves and assist the heart to work more efficiently. It can help improve endurance and help prevent injury during physical activity. And if that isn't enough, yoga just makes you feel better. All of these things are key ingredients to a deep and restful night's sleep.

  Yoga is a 5,000-year-old system of integrative exercise. With its slow movements and focus on rhythmic breathing it is an ideal companion to improved well being and enhanced restfulness.

  If you want to give yoga a try, a good start is finding an instructor with experience and a personal practice. Look for a teacher who is sensitive to student needs and is willing to adapt asanas (postures) to fit individual levels of fitness and flexibility. Once you learn some of the asanas you can safely practice them at home.

  There are many difficult postures in yoga but you are not required to attempt or practice anything beyond your level of comfort. Yoga encourages you to work at your level and honor yourself by maintaining awareness toward the circadian rhythms and various cycles of your own body.

  The market is also saturated with some really quality books and DVDs to help you embark on a personal practice.

  Find postures you enjoy, that feel good and feel like a relief instead of a chore. Looking forward to your yoga is a factor that ensures you will continue, and persistence allows yoga's benefits to accrue and expand.

  Thirty minutes of yoga per day can revolutionize your health and peace of mind -- integrating mind, body and spirit in a way that allows you to feel clarity within a system that values you as a whole.

  Harmony brings peace and peace keeps us present, alive in the moment, satisfied, happy and waking up ready to enjoy the day.