How Can Yoga Nidra Help?

Yoga Nidra:

A style of guided meditation that uses breath awareness, relaxation techniques, and visualization to draw the listener into a state of deep rest.

This state of being is also called non-sleep deep rest, or NSDR.

As you explore the world of yoga nidra recordings online, you’ll discover a variety of guides and practices to choose from. When I was a beginner, I remember thinking: How many different things can yoga nidra be for? (Seriously, search “yoga nidra for” on YouTube.)

So, where should you start?

Let’s explore some popular categories of yoga nidra and NSDR meditations.

Nervous System Regulation

Techniques used in yoga nidra guidance include breath awareness, pranayama (breathwork), connecting to your senses, body scan, and visualization. Skillful sequencing of these techniques draws the listener into a state of relaxation and deep rest. The most popular theme? (Drumroll….) Stress relief!

To explore these practices, use keywords such as yoga nidra for relaxation, deep rest, peace, calm, anxiety, reducing stress, stress relief. NSDR for calm, relaxation, reset your nervous system, vagus nerve stimulation.

Here is one of my favorite short practices on YouTube: 15 minute yoga nidra | recharge your nervous system with Ally Boothroyd.

Healing and Recovery

Practicing yoga nidra or NSDR meditation activates the parasympathetic nervous system, nicknamed “rest & digest”. In this state, the body prioritizes digestion and recovery. We can metabolize and integrate food as energy and essential nutrients. At the cellular level, systems in the body work to clear out waste, repair damage, and generate new cells.

These processes happen automatically during cycles of sleep called NREM, which we experience a few times each night. The state of yoga nidra is biologically similar to sleep, so we also experience the benefits that occur during NREM sleep. This is why people report feeling more energized after a yoga nidra practice. This also explains why so many people find yoga nidra helpful as they recover from illness or injury. One of my mentors, Ally Boothroyd, has received thousands of comments on her YouTube channel from people who live with a chronic illness, people who undergo cancer treatment, and people who experience symptoms of long Covid. All of them describe the ways a regular yoga nidra practice improves their quality of life.

Because yoga nidra takes us out of the body’s stress response and brings us into the body’s natural state of healing, we can experience the benefits of “rest & digest”.

To explore these practices, use keywords such as yoga nidra for recovery, deep healing, health, chronic pain.

Yoga nidra guide and content creator Ayla Nova shares her story of cancer recovery in this YouTube video.

Sleep & Insomnia

Now you know that yoga nidra is (1) very relaxing and (2) biologically similar to sleep, it makes sense that many people find yoga nidra during times of troubled sleep. I discovered yoga nidra during a period of insomnia, where I could sleep only 2-3 hours at a time and was awake for a few hours in the middle of the night… every night! Listening to yoga nidra recordings helped me fall back to sleep. I also used them in the morning or the early afternoon as an energy boost. After a few months I was able to sleep through the night. But I enjoyed the short practices during the day so much that I continued and replaced my 3 pm coffee habit with a NSDR meditation!

If you enjoy sleep stories or guided meditation, consider yoga nidra guidance to help you fall asleep. Yoga nidra guidance for sleep is different from a traditional practice in that there are no cues to wake up at the end of the practice. These recordings tend to be longer and have relaxing music or nature sounds. The guidance might last 20 minutes but the soundscape continues while you sleep.

Here are two suggestions from Insight Timer, where you can listen for free with no ads!

90 Min Guided Meditation for Insomnia from Kristyn Rose and Yoga Nidra for Insomnia from Ally Boothroyd.

To nap, or not to nap?

That is the question!

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia, or CBT-I, instructs you to stay awake during the day. That means no naps. As fun as “Sleep Restriction Therapy” sounds, I firmly disagree. Ever hung out with a toddler who missed their nap? Well, it’s no different for adults. When you are sleep deprived, you are a pain in the butt! And you’re more likely to make bad decisions and simple mistakes.

But, you aren’t a toddler, so you still have to go to work, study, take care of yourself, and take care of your family with a scrambled brain and a nervous system screaming at you to sleep. In that case, a nap sounds pretty good, right?

And this is where yoga nidra or NSDR save the day. (You could think of yoga nidra as the original power nap.) It’s relaxing, it’s energizing, it helps clear your sleep debt…but you aren’t actually asleep.

If you fall asleep during a meditation, that’s okay, too. Your body is always trying to move back to a state of homeostasis. Lack of sleep is a big stressor to systems throughout the body! So give yourself the opportunity to recover and trust that your body knows what it needs. Somedays that will look like falling asleep during a yoga nidra or NSDR meditation.

To use one of these practices in place of a nap, I recommend a shorter recording of 15-25 minutes. If you are worried about falling asleep, set an alarm for the end of your practice. If you’d like to nap, you might set an alarm for 45 minutes or 90 minutes after the start of the practice. (90 minutes is the average length of one NREM sleep cycle.) So if you started the recording at 11:00, you could set an alarm for 12:30.

These short practices are designed to be energizing, so they are best for mornings and afternoons. If you practice in the evening, these might be too energizing and make it hard to sleep at your desired bedtime.

Here is one of my NSDR recordings on Insight Timer Bright Morning: 17 Minute NSDR.

Somatic Safety & Positive Feeling Tones

The Pancha Maya Koshas, or 5 Aspects of the Self, is a framework to understand ourselves as complex, multi-dimensional beings. The 5 aspects are physical body, energetic body & breath, mental & emotional body, wisdom body or witness consciousness, and the bliss body that experiences union and divine connection. The koshas are often depicted as nesting dolls from most dense (the phyical body) to most subtle (the bliss body). It is taught that each aspect influences the others, so healing in one kosha can ripple out and positively impact other aspects.

Let’s look at an example of this teaching in real life. Imagine that you experience anger. This experience happens in the mental & emotional body and ripples out. In the energetic body, your breath will change. Perhaps you hold your breath or your breathing becomes quicker and shallow. You might feel a wave of heat in your body. In the physical body, your muscles tense and your posture changes. Your heart beats faster and you might begin to sweat. A cascade of hormones flood your body, preparing to fight or run. Changes occur in the brain; your prefrontal cortex becomes less active (bye bye empathy and rational decision making) and your amygdala gets excited (hello emotional reactivity and getting offended).

So what would happen if we could intentionally shift the experience of the mental & emotional body? Imagine the experience of peace. Maybe you connect to a pleasant memory or you imagine a peaceful scene, for example, rocking in a hammock and watching the sunset at a tropical beach with your favorite drink in hand. The suggestion of peace fills the mental & emotional body. In the energetic body, your breath will change to become deeper and slower. In the physical body, your heart rate slows down, your muscles begin to relax, and you might feel a sense of softness or openness. You’re moving from defensive into a relaxed state. Changes occur in the brain; your amygdala calms down (bye bye anxiety, fear, and anger) and your prosocial self comes back online (hello listening, empathy, creativity, and rational decision making).

Yoga nidra offers techniques that allow us to cultivate specific emotions and corresponding feeling tones in the body. This makes yoga nidra a powerful tool to support emotional regulation. It’s also been used successfully as a complementary treatment for PTSD, anxiety disorders, and depression. If you’re curious to learn more about this, Richard Miller has created a system of yoga nidra guidance called iREST. This protocol has been studied in the context of mental health and is recommended as a source of trauma-informed meditations.

To explore this topic more, keywords include asraya, inner refuge, inner resource, inner sanctuary. (Note that Inner Resource is a term used by iREST and guides trained in this style.) Here is a beautiful Inner Refuge practice on YouTube from one of my mentors Tiina Kivinen.

Belfast Harbor at sunset. Photo by Kate Mikkelsen

You can also search for a specific emotion or experience you would like to cultivate during your practice. Popular themes include yoga nidra for peace, love, gratitude, trust, abundance, loving kindness, joy, compassion.

If you’d like to explore this style of yoga nidra, I guide live meditation sessions on Insight Timer. Check the calendar for upcoming events!

Personal Transformation

Sankalpa is the foundation of yoga nidra practice. It’s a Sanskrit word that translates to a heartfelt intention or desire. “San” meaning born from the heart and “kalpa” references a length of time, an eon. As it references such a long period of time, I like to think of it as your purpose in this life. As you consider the word purpose, notice what comes up. These ideas, words, feelings, or images may be the start of your sankalpa.

In traditional yoga nidra guidance, sankalpa is invited near the beginning of the practice as you settle in and near the end of the practice as you access the most subtle aspect of yourself, the bliss body. Since each body influences the others, planting this intention at the deepest level of your being ensures that it will ripple through all aspects of your life. Using neuroscience as a lens, you are rewiring neural connections in your brain. This aspect of yoga nidra takes dedicated practice but brings delightful (and sometimes unexpected!) gifts into your life.

Don’t worry, there is no pressure to commit to a sankalpa and cultivate it for an eon. You may have a primary sankalpa that is one word, for example, peace, connection, healing, or love. Then develop secondary sankalpas as your circumstances change. My sankalpa is healing and it has changed with the seasons of life since I began my practice. At first, I just needed to sleep and I used the phrase “I am resting deeply.” Then, I entered a period of emotional healing and worked with various phrases around trust and self-acceptance. As I stepped into the role of guiding yoga nidra and sharing these teachings, my sankalpa took on a larger scope and became “I heal myself as I heal others.”

Developing a sankalpa is very supportive for people who have decided to start a journey of personal transformation. To explore your sankalpa, try these meditations from Ally Boothroyd on Insight Timer or Tiina Kivinen on YouTube.

How Can Yoga Nidra Help?

As a beginner, I asked myself how can one practice do so much? How can yoga nidra be for so many different things?!

Now, I’m starting my fourth year of regular practice and my second year as a teacher, and this question still excites me. I’ve started to think about yoga nidra as the Swiss Army knife of self-care because it offers so many benefits!

My final thought for you, curious reader, is this: There is no wrong way to start a yoga nidra practice. Start exploring the abundance of resources online or look for yoga nidra events near you.

If you’re near Bangor, stop by the space at the Spiral Goddess Collective and try one of our classes!