What is Yoga nidra and why is it good for sleep
Yoga nidra translates to ‘yogic sleep’. It is a spiritual practise with tantric roots that originate in India. It’s important to understand and honour a practise from its roots so that the teachings can live on in a genuine way. These practises should be inclusive, not exclusive.
In yoga nidra you experience a half waking, half sleeping state which can be described as ‘a conscious sleep’. Your body is relaxed and the mind is gently active. Yoga nidra is an effortless state of being. It requires the person to lay down and listen to a facilitator take them through settling breaths and a body scan. It is very possible the person may fall to sleep before they get to the end of the yoga nidra. This is okay and encouraged, especially if you are looking for support to sleep better.
Common experiences include: a feeling of deep relaxation, a sense timelessness and physical sensations of being heavy or weightless.
There are many ways to apply the practise depending on what you need.
Benefits include:
- Help to relieve stress
- Improve sleep and memory
- Reduce anxiety and other trauma responses in the body
- Harness creativity
- Enhance self-awareness
- Explore the nature of the mind
This blog post focuses specifically on yoga nidra for sleep, however I will expand on yoga nidra as a spiritual practise in another blog down the line.
Sleep Basics
Getting a good night’s sleep is incredibly important for your health. An average adult needs 7-9 hours of sleep per night, whilst children and teenagers often need more. Many people struggle with sleep or the ability to relax and switch off. This could be due to work or relationship stress, lifestyle choices such as heavy drinking, poor diet, sleeping pill addiction or always going to bed too late. In more severe cases, some people suffer from insomnia and others from PTSD that can have a hugely negative impact on sleep. Sleep can also be impacted due to positive events, like holidays, celebrations and parties.
The reality is sleep isn’t always perfect but we can do the best we can to improve our quality of sleep.
What happens during sleep?
There are two types of sleep REM (Rapid Eye Movement) and NREM (Non Rapid Eye Movement). REM is when the brain is most active and dreaming. NREM is when the brain is resting. We experience both of these sleep states during the night.
NREM can be broken down into 4 stages:
NREM 1&2 - Light sleep
NREM 3&4 - Deep sleep
REM - Principle stage that we dream
These two types of sleep are experienced during the night in approximately 90 minute cycles (with lots of variability). Within that 90 minute cycle a person can experience REM & NREM stages 1-4. This 90 minute cycle continues to repeat during the night.
Different brain wave states are active at different stages of a sleep cycle. How much of one is more dominant than the other is changing all the time. Typically deep sleep (NREM 3&4) dominates during the earlier cycles of sleep and light sleep (NREM 1&2 + REM) dominate the latter.
In deep sleep powerful brain waves occur. (NREM) Deep sleep brain waves help compartmentalise or ‘file away’ memories and learning.
The key difference between yoga nidra and sleep is that in yoga nidra there is a slight trace of awareness. We are conscious.
In sleep we are unconscious, but ironically, the brain remains more active at night.
Brain wave states and yoga nidra
The brain wave states are named after the greek letters of the alphabet. Each brain wave state has a unique vibration measured in hertz.
Gamma brain waves (30-100Hz) - An intuitive state of being. Insight and intuition arise. Creative inspiration. Yoga nidra offers a gateway to these states, by following a recipe of settling breaths, opposites (warm body, cool body) and visualisation a person may experience gamma during yoga nidra, or unexpectedly later in the day.
Beta brain waves (12-30Hz) - Waking state. When our mind is most active and focused during the day. People who are consistently overstimulated and stressed sometimes do not realise how stressed they are and live in a heightened beta state (high beta). People who are functioning with a good level of alertness and concentration during the day may be in (middling beta). Beta is the first state that is experienced as the person lies down to practise yoga nidra. Depending on the day the person may need more time to settle the breath and body.
Alpha brain waves (8-12Hz) - Flow state. This is an alert but calm stage. Physically and mentally relaxed but still aware. It is when the person is able to feel relaxed and creative. This is the brain wave state that is present as the person settles deeper into yoga nidra. To maintain alpha brain state in this stage of yoga nidra a person can soften deeper into the experience by visualising the body resting on the floor or by noticing the sensations of the body.
Theta (4-7Hz) - Dreaming and trance state. In yoga nidra this is when the person can begin to daydream and visualise shapes, colours or even smells. All the senses come alive. These are the brain waves states that are active during REM + NREM 1&2.
Delta brain waves (0.1-4 Hz) - This is where healing and deep meditative states can occur. In sleep, this is the deep sleep phase active during NREM 3 & 4 where synapsis in the brain are going wild to file away memories and learning from the day. The most restorative and powerful brain waves.
Alpa-Beta boundary (12-13Hz) - Transitioning between the two states. A usual experience in yoga nidra or falling to sleep. The transition space between two brainwave states.
Why is yoga nidra good for sleep and relaxation?
Yoga nidra can help you respond to the natural call for sleep: Sleep moves in cycles, so does yoga nidra (ref Yoga Nidra Made Easy). Now you know that REM and the four NREM stages are two key forms of sleep, you understand that you can experience all of these stages as you go through a yoga nidra practise. This means this practise quite literally prepares you for sleep. The more you practise, the more natural it will feel to relax and enter sleep states.
Yoga nidra can help compartmentalise thoughts before you sleep - Have you ever had the experience where there are too many thoughts whirling around during the day then when it comes to going to sleep all of a sudden all the thoughts come into the mind? Yoga nidra allows those thoughts to compartmentalise. When you enter deep trance states within yoga nidra, you are allowing memories, thoughts and new information to find a home. Yoga nidra promotes neuroplasticity to rewire new brain pathways. (Wow!)
Yoga nidra can be a great resource to manage stress - As you practise yoga nidra you become familiar with entering different brainwave states. With practise you can become better at finding these calmer states and breathing slowly, even on a highly stressful day. Like any other skill, the more you practise the more natural it will become.
Yoga nidra practise in the daytime can be refreshing and equivalent to 3-4 hours of deep sleep - It is a supplement to sleep but not a replacement for sleep. Around the hours of 1-3pm there is sometimes a lull of energy, a 20-30min yoga nidra practise can be a beautiful tonic to help you feel refreshed with energy for the rest of the day. The practise cycles through the sleep stages, mirroring sleep, which is why you feel alive afterwards as if you have slept. Keep the yoga nidra no longer than 30 min so that you don’t interfere with your night time sleep.
Yoga nidra offers an expansive view of sleep - Tuning in to your natural rhythms of relaxation more frequently during the day can help
Benefits of good sleep:
- Brain function and neuroplasticity: Improved memory (you need sleep after learning to click the save button on everything you’ve been learning) Ref TED Talk Dr Matthew Walker
- Improves reproductive system for both women and men
- Cardiovascular system
- Immune system becomes more resilient. Reduce inflammation and produce healthy working cells
- Improve appearance of skin-tone and bright eyes (beauty sleep!)
- Ability to emotionally regulate
Lifestyle choices to improve quality of sleep:
- Regular bed time
- Limit screen time or heavy cognitive tasks late in the evening
- Make sure your space is dark or use an eye mask to block out the light
- Create a wind down routine: brush and floss teeth, shower or wash face with warm water (warm water helps improve ability to fall asleep)
- Keep your sleeping space cool
- Let the bed be associated with sleep, not wakefulness. If you’re laying in bed having trouble sleeping, an analogy from Dr Matthew Walker on Huberman podcast: ‘You wouldn’t sit at the dinner table and wait to get hungry, so why would you lie in bed and wait to get sleepy’?
- Listen to a yoga nidra for sleep and relaxation (evening)
- Schedule a 20min yoga nidra in the afternoon when energy drops to practise getting into a restful state
Real-life scenarios that impact sleep:
- Baby waking up throughout the night. Broken sleep for months!
- Waking up at 3am with no idea why so you start to panic which creates more anxiety around sleep. Finally at 5am you drift off to sleep, only for the alarm to strike at 6am.
- Your partner gets up to pee during the night and you can’t get back to sleep. You fear your smartwatch is going to tell you in the morning that you didn’t get your NREM sleep
7-9 hours of undisturbed sleep every night is a great thing to aim for, but what about when that doesn’t happen?
Having a very rigid view on how sleep should look can make it very difficult for us to find peace with the fact our sleep patterns are not always perfect. It’s encouraging to know yoga nidra can help.
Wearing a smartwatch to sleep? Yay or nay
This is completely personal to the person.
Personally this is where my holistic side takes over. I do not have a smartwatch for sleep as I believe sleep is a sacred time, not to be ‘tarnished’ with more stats. If I’ve had a bad night and my watch tells me I haven’t had a good sleep, that can have a negative effect on my mindset for the day.
Some people love the sleep stats. I would never stop a client from wearing them if they enjoy seeing the stats or it encourages them to sleep more.
I’ll throw a spanner in the works though, when I have facilitated yoga nidra at retreats during the day many people have their smartwatches on. They come up to me after and say their watch told them their heart rate went down and they were in a rest state for about 15-20 minutes. This is really interesting because the science shows that yoga nidra really does parasympathic nervous system and receive sleep benefits during the day.
What is the difference between yoga nidra and ‘normal meditation’?
In a seated meditation there is more focus on your attention being drawn to the breath or a mantra. The intention is to limit distractions of the mind, such as thoughts or other sounds that might be present. This can be challenging for people because the nature of the mind is constantly in motion with thoughts or taking in outside stimulus. In our overstimulated world the mind is working overtime. Meditation requires us to train the mind to become still. People find this hard because it is the opposite to what they are used to and usually give up. Yoga nidra for sleep on the other hand, demands less ‘effort’ and requires a gently active mind for the bodyscan with the option to fall asleep. Sometimes, just knowing you are allowed to sleep can help people relax.
When you practise yoga nidra, you begin to experience the expansive nature of mind: awareness. Witnessing this awareness can help you realise your mind is not necessarily ‘in your head’ but that there is a whole spacious awareness available to us. This can help in seated meditation because we are open to ‘space’ rather than being ‘stuck in our head’.
This may sound quite abstract, but it is something to be experienced and the really cool thing is, it is available to everyone!
Dr Andrew Huberman is familiar with yoga nidra and speaks about the benefits of the practise on his podcast. He uses the term ‘non-sleep deep-rest’ (acronym NSDR) as a gateway for people to experience this practise without the word ‘yoga’ becoming a barrier. Some people are resistant to yogic language and the spiritual elements of the practise.
I understand his reasons for doing this. Personally, I am all for the yogic language. This practise is a spiritual practise whether people like it or not, but I agree with finding the style that works best for you because - newsflash - everyone is different!
Main schools of yoga nidra
Richard Miller of iRest, Himalayan Institute, Swami Satyananda
Key teachers in the yoga nidra world
Uma Dinsmore-Tuli of the Yoga Nidra Network, Jennifer Piercy on Insight Timer, Rod Stryker, Tash Pinter (trained with Rod Stryker).
In summary
Yoga nidra is safe and accessible for everyone
Yoga nidra activates the parasympathetic nervous system which helps to improve sleep, reduce stress and harness creativity
20-30minutes of yoga nidra during the day can help to consolidate memories and information and be as effective as 3-4hours of sleep (not a replacement for sleep, a supplement)
References
-Yoga Nidra Made Easy book - Uma Dinsmore Tuli
-Andrew Huberman https://www.hubermanlab.com/nsdr
-TED Talk Dr Matthew Walker https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MuIMqhT8DM
-Ref Michel Jouvet https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6146056/
-Brain wave states https://www.diygenius.com/the-5-types-of-brain-waves/