I Fixed My Sleep Posture for Better Rest and Overall Health

December 15, 2025 / Amelia Frost /

When we think about good posture, we usually associate it with standing up straight or not slouching in our seat—but what about sleep posture?

As someone with great standing posture, I recently realized my sleep was a complete mess. I often wake up in the morning with sore limbs or a stiff neck, due to the positions I contort my body into at night. Oftentimes, I’ll sleep with my arms crossed under my head or with one arm smashed under the weight of my body. Sometimes, my circulation is so bad that I wake up with a dead arm full of pins and needles and have to shake it back to life.

My bad sleep posture wasn’t just affecting my sleep—it was also affecting my overall health. People can train themselves to have better standing posture, so why not apply that same logic to your sleep position?

To see if I could fix my sleep posture, I spoke to Dr. Andrea Matsumura, MD, a double board-certified internal medicine and sleep medicine physician, who shared some important insight into how our bodies work while we sleep, why we can find ourselves in uncomfortable positions, and how to correct your sleep position for a better night’s rest.

What is the best sleep position?

There isn’t a “right” way to sleep, but there is one position that’s best for rest and overall health. “You want to sleep on your back optimally,” says Dr. Matsumura. “You can sleep on your side, but sometimes people will need a pillow between their knees to sleep. But ideally, you want to sleep on your back.”

Sleeping on your back keeps your spine aligned, which is key to waking up without aches and pains. “There’s discussion around if you have a hard mattress, you want a softer pillow so that the spine aligns. If you have a hard pillow, you want a softer mattress. Whatever it takes to align your spine.”

You may have heard that sleeping on your stomach is bad for you, but Dr. Masumura says it really depends on the mattress and pillow you use. “There is some data that shows that if you’re sleeping on your stomach, it can put strain on your spine. But that’s not always true if you have a really soft pillow and your spine is aligned,” she says. “If you are sleeping on your stomach and you’re having back pain, okay, that’s a red flag to say, don’t sleep on your stomach, sleep on your back.”

What are signs that my sleep position is bad for me?

Aches like back pain and neck strain indicate you’re not sleeping in the right position. Contorted positions can lead to numbness. “Positions where our hands might be curled in or you’re sleeping on a limb, you might wake up and it’s numb because you’re compressing that,” says Dr. Matsumura. There’s no need panic or concern though: “That doesn’t mean you’re going to cause any damage. It just means that the nerve is compressed,” she says. “And so then you have to wake up and move it around and wake that nerve up again. And sometimes people can have numbness and tingling for a while, but that doesn’t mean that you’re causing yourself nerve damage.”