One Magickal Way To Feel More Rested
SPOILER ALERT: The is not about taking a nap or going to bed at all.
20-minutes of THIS equals 2 hours of sleep!
Research on NSDR, non-sleep deep rest, in the form of Yoga Nidra has proven that 20 minutes of Yoga Nidra practice is equivalent to 2 hours of sleep.
Read that again.
Let it sink in.
Not only is Yoga Nidra a highly effective way of slowing down your nervous system and getting your entire system the rest and recovery it needs, it is an exceptional way of connecting with your higher self, and healing deep emotional and ancestral wounds.
Better yet, if you fall asleep in the midst of the practice, you STILL get the benefits!
I recommend you put on a Yoga Nidra practice as you are laying your head on the pillow. I usually fall asleep within the first 5-10 minutes. But your brain and nervous system are still hearing the instructions and processing the experience.
If I wake in the middle of the night, I put on a yoga nidra guided meditation. It is an access point to connect with my higher self, my ancestors, my spirit, and Giggle Bumps (my pet name for Goddess).
Sometimes yoga nidra helps me get back to sleep, and sometimes I stay awake through the whole practice. Either way, when I do get up the next morning, I don’t have the sleepies and tireds. Rather, I feel rested, as if I did sleep through the whole night.
If you sleep with a partner, I recommend these headband headphones. I use them almost every night. Great for side-sleepers as well and available on Amazon.
Recommended - Yoga Nidra and Beyond with Ayla Nova
If you search “yoga nidra” on YouTube or any streaming platform, hundreds of practices will come up. I encourage you to try many of them. I’ve tried dozens of different teachers.
Ayla Nova turned to Yoga Nidra as she was going through cancer treatment. Not only did it help her process through some of the most intense periods of her treatment, but she credits it with saving her life and launching her into a whole new way of living.
Her yoga nidra practices are available on all streaming platforms, including as a podcast on Spotify, Apple iTunes, and YouTube. She has over 100 practices available at no cost (she does have a donate button…I like to donate often as I use her practices almost daily). She has practices varying from 10 minutes to 75 minutes long.
What I especially love about Ayla Nova is that she follows the prescribed 5-koshas process of yoga nidra purely. This process (described below) is the science behind how Yoga Nidra works to balance and align your nervous system on multiple levels.
The Science of Yoga Nidra
The reason Yoga Nidra works so well is because the process of a complete practice takes your nervous system through a step-by-step process that accesses various layers of your neurology.
1. Body Position - Savasana - Deep Rest
The first step in Yoga Nidra is to put your body into a position that aligns your nerves, relaxes, your muscles and tissues, and prepares your system for deep rest. This position is known as savasana, corpse pose, and is meant to encourage your entire body to relax in its most anatomical alignment as supported by the floor (or bed) beneath you.
2. Focus - San Kalpa - Mindful Intention
A San Kalpa is a very concise statement, phrased as an I Am…statement, that affirms your intention.
Here are a few examples:
I am blessed.
I am open to receiving.
I am healing.
I am calm and aware.
The shorter the intention, and the more it evokes a feeling or sensation within you the better it works to focus your mind and brain throughout the practice. Your instructor will offer options, and over time you may evolve into various different intentions depending on what you are working on in your life. By repeating the san kalpa three times at the beginning of your practice, it serves to slow down your brain and get your entire nervous system focused on the task at hand.
3. Body Scan - Annamaya Kosha - The Physical Layer
The first layer of consciousness is the Annamaya Kosha is known as “the food body” and includes your physical body. It’s very easy to connect with as you can literally touch it.
Once you have established a clear intention, your guide will take you through a process of connecting to your BODY through what Ayla Nova calls “the rotation of consciousness.” You will be asked to bring awareness to your body parts, one at a time. Essentially, by hearing the name of the body part, and either paying attention to how that body part feels or breathing into it, you are systematically relaxing every body part through your entire system.
4. Breathwork - Pranamaya Kosha - The Energy Layer
The second layer of consciousness is the pranamaya kosha, the “energy body” which is the life-force energy that moves through your body, riding on the breath.
Prana in yogic philosophy, is life-force energy that moves through your nadis. Put simply, your nervous system needs oxygen to send neurological impulses and body messages through your nerves. The pranamaya kosha is this movement of energy through the nerve pathways of your body.
By bringing clear intention and awareness to your breath, you are accessing this second layer of consciousness that lives within your nerves and the neurological wiring throughout your system.
5. Balance of Opposites - Manomaya Kosha - The Mental/Emotional Layer
The third layer of consciousness is the manomaya kosha, also known as the “mind-body” which is our brain and body’s way of processing thoughts, moods, and emotions, through hormones.
In life, it is human to have an emotional response to the things happening to you in your world. That emotional response is a combination of mental thoughts (analyzing what happened) and emotional feels (hormones coursing through your body).
In this section of the yoga nidra process, you are asked to purposely evoke thoughts and moods around a certain balance of opposites: heavy vs. light, sad vs. happy, angry vs. calm. By consciously evoking these opposites, your body and consciousness learns to balance them. That balancing process helps your mind/emotions to recognize that emotions are just that, emotions, or feelings that are temporary and a way for your body to process through and evolve with the changes happening in your life and world.
In order to heal, you must feel.
This section helps you to manage/process those feels without them consuming you.
6. Visualization Story - Vijnanamaya Kosha - The Wisdom Layer
The fourth layer of consciousness is the vijnanamaya kosha, also known as the “wisdom body” which helps you access the deeper wisdoms and insights you have buried in the filing cabinet storage-house of your brain.
Your brain (and nervous system) is a vast storage center of all the data, information, experiences, insights, and pearls of wisdom of your entire life, as well as that of all of your ancestors. That’s a massive and growing database of wisdom!
This is why the spiritual gurus always say, the answers lie within you.
You have a massive database of wisdom that is constantly growing, inside yourself!
In this section of yoga nidra, your guide will walk you through a seemingly random set of items or scenes to visualize. They may come at you at what feels like a rapid-fire pace. This is intentional. Each item, object, or scene spoken lights up a different part of your brain, essentially waking up and opening up the filing cabinets of wisdom within those parts of your brain, and then connecting them to each other.
This is where intuition lives. Your ability to access the insights and wisdom you already have in your brain, and understand that language of your Higher Self.
Yes, this is DEEP STUFF.
The more you practice Yoga Nidra, the more areas of your file-house of wisdom lights up and the more you will be able to activate your inner wisdom…without even trying…in your waking life.
7. Stillness - Anandamaya Kosha - The Bliss Layer
The fifth layer of consciousness is anandamaya kosha, or “bliss body” which is that state of ultimate ease and grace that happens when everything is in right and perfect alignment. It’s the complete awareness that all is perfect and divine, always.
At the end of the yoga nidra practice, your guide offers a space of silence, for you and your system to totally relax and bask in the glow of all the work you have done to reach this subtle layer of awareness. This can last anywhere from 1-5 minutes before you are guided to come back into the physical and mundane awareness.
At this point, you may already be fully asleep, but if you are still awake, this layer often produces an overall sense of wholeness, of full acceptance, of comfort in stillness.
7. Return to Focus - San Kalpa - Mindful Intention
As you come out of the yoga nidra practice, you are prompted to come back to your San Kalpa so that you can sense how the intention you set at the beginning of practice has come full circle. This is also so that you can bring your san kalpa, intention, as a thread from your practice into the mundane world of your every day life.
Resources
Here are a few excellent articles about Yoga Nidra from seasoned masters.
Yoga Nidra and the Five Koshas
The Origin and Clinical Relevance of Yoga Nidra
What Is Yoga Nidra: A Complete Guide To The Practice Of Yogic Sleep
The following list of research about yoga nidra was taken directly from this last article:
“There have been several studies done on Yoga Nidra exploring its effects. Here is a brief summary of the most eye-opening findings about the practice:
A case report that studied chronic insomnia patients showed that the participants experienced less anxiety regarding falling asleep after 3 months of doing Yoga Nidra. The study also showed the sleep onset latency (the time it takes a person to fall asleep), meaning the practice may have helped them drift off quicker.
A 2012 study found Yoga Nidra increases heart rate variability and shifts the nervous system towards parasympathetic dominance (also known as the rest and digest mode). For context, a person with a high HRV is likely to have a strong ability to tolerate stress and quickly recover from prior accumulated stress.
An eight-week study on military combat veterans found that iRest, a form of Yoga Nidra, can ease the symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Participants reported feeling less rage, anxiety, emotional reactivity, and intrusive memories after attending weekly Yoga Nidra classes for eight weeks. They also noticed increased feelings of relaxation, peace, and self-awareness.
A study was carried out on patients from the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, CSM Medical University in India. It found that Yoga Nidra, combined with other medical and yogic treatments, can help manage several psychosomatic diseases. These include cancer, bronchial asthma, colitis, peptic ulcer and menstrual irregularities.
A separate study was carried out on patients with menstrual disorders. In addition to the menstrual irregularities, all participants suffered from anxiety and/or depression. The finding showed that practicing Yoga Nidra improved the mental health of those with mild to moderate anxiety or depression. However, they found no improvement among the participants with severe symptoms.
A study was carried out on diabetic patients in 2009 to determine if Yoga Nidra can affect blood glucose levels. They found that the diabetic patients who practiced Yoga Nidra combined with their prescribed drug regimen had less fluctuating blood glucose. Moreover, they had reduced associated symptoms than those who only took the medication.”
Also, here is a deep dive into the science of Melatonin and how it serves as a balance of the Light and Dark of life. Nestle in…it’s deep.
