Yoga Nidra for Sleep: Does It Work?

Wish to crush it on the fitness center, within the workplace, and at residence? Begin with a great evening’s sleep. Relaxation is essential for general well being and well-being in any respect levels of life. With one in three adults reporting “poor” or “honest” sleep, many are exploring yoga nidra to have extra restful nights.

Having been recorded way back to the seventh century AD, “yogic sleep” has loads of advantages — like probably higher relaxation, stress administration, and a wholesome temper. However “yoga nidra shouldn’t be an alternative choice to sleep,” says yoga nidra teacher Karen Brody.

It’s additionally not yoga. “Yoga nidra is a sleep-based meditation apply and a type of consciousness,” she explains.

Learn on to find out about guided meditation for sleep, the best way to get began, what it could do for you — and why you continue to want not less than seven hours of shuteye.

What Is Yoga Nidra?

Yoga nidra is a yogic meditation apply whose objective is a stability between leisure and consciousness that brings you to the third of 4 ranges of consciousness. Within the context of sleep, that is the deepest stage of non-REM (fast eye motion) sleep.

“Yoga nidra is a way to entry a state of deep leisure for each the thoughts and physique, the place consciousness stays awake and conscious,” says Tracee Stanley, creator of Radiant Relaxation: Yoga Nidra for Deep Leisure and Woke up Readability and a yoga nidra facilitator and practitioner for over 20 years.

In a typical yoga nidra apply, you lie in your again in savasana whereas an teacher guides you thru a visualization designed to maintain you hovering between sleep and wakefulness. When you may drift off, that’s not the objective.

“The most important false impression is that yoga nidra is a yoga nap,” provides Stanley. “Throughout sleep, you aren’t conscious. You don’t bear in mind what occurred whenever you had been asleep. Within the state of yoga nidra, you stay acutely aware within the liminal areas between sleep and wakefulness.”

How Does Yoga Nidra Work?

Yoga nidra helps you decelerate and loosen up, shifting your physique into “relaxation and digest” mode and turning on the parasympathetic nervous system.

The apply shifts you into “a peaceable and blissful state often called samadhi,” Stanley says. “Yoga nidra is the nurturing facet of nature that welcomes repose, relaxation, and being held unconditionally,” she explains.

That sounds, properly, blissful, however does yoga nidra actually work? Analysis has confirmed vital variations in delta mind waves after solely two weeks of a yoga nidra apply. Delta waves are related to the deepest ranges of leisure.

We’ll dive into different advantages in a while.

However as for claims that yoga nidra can offset a poor evening’s sleep or by some means exchange sleep? No approach, says psychotherapist Niloufar Esmaeilpour, who holds a grasp’s in medical psychology.

“Assuming that practices like yoga nidra can exchange sleep is dangerous as a result of sleep includes essential organic processes, together with mobile restore, toxin clearance from the mind, and reminiscence consolidation, which can’t be replicated by meditation or leisure methods,” she says.

Brody provides, “it could assist folks who’ve sleep points go to sleep or get again to sleep. evening’s sleep takes you from waking to goals to deep sleep.” Yoga nidra does all that and takes you right into a “state of consciousness that can not be accessed by standard sleep.”

How Does Yoga Nidra Differ From Meditation?

Whereas each yoga nidra and meditation supply guided routes to leisure, they differ in numerous methods. For starters, you’re sometimes seated throughout standard meditation, whereas the customary physique place for yoga nidra is corpse pose (savasana).

The 2 practices additionally emphasize completely different levels of consciousness. In meditation, “you both comply with your breath or a mantra while you’re awake,” Brody explains, not like the sleep-wake-dream-bliss journey of yoga nidra, which reaches deeper ranges of leisure.

But it surely’s positively not a contest: Each yoga nidra and meditation supply ample advantages for thoughts and physique. And who couldn’t use some down time away from screens and work?

Do Yoga Nidra

Training yoga nidra for sleep is easy. You’ll find an in-person or on-line class, or obtain a yoga nidra meditation on-line. (BODi’s Sound Meditation program contains practices particularly for sleep.)

Discover a comfy spot to lie down — on a yoga mat, in mattress, on the sofa, and even in your automotive. If want be, you’ll be able to even sit.

When you’re cozy, flip in your guided meditation. You may need to cowl your physique with a blanket, placed on a watch masks, and/or put on headphones. Then, tune out the actual world as you tune in to yoga nidra. You may apply yoga nidra any time of day or evening, and classes can final from quarter-hour to an hour or extra.

Yoga Nidra Advantages

Listed below are a number of the science-backed advantages of yoga nidra:

1. A lift of mindfulness

Well being employees experiencing each bodily and psychological exhaustion underwent an eight-week guided yoga nidra program and confirmed “vital enchancment” in mindfulness.

2. Much less stress, improved shallowness

A gaggle of college college students was administered one other eight-week yoga nidra routine consisting of twice-weekly, one-hour classes. The end result was a big lower in stress depth ranges and elevated shallowness scores in contrast with a management group.

3. Higher REM and non-REM sleep

Amongst sufferers with power insomnia who underwent a yoga nidra intervention, sleep high quality and effectivity improved considerably, even compared with cognitive behavioral remedy.

What’s not on the checklist of advantages? Swapping in yoga nidra for sleep, regardless of what you may see on social media. Make yoga nidra a part of your leisure routine — however be sure you prioritize the remaining you deserve each evening, too.