Yoga Nidra is one of the most relaxing forms of yoga I have personally come across. There are days when our body feels tired, the mind feels heavy, and even after sleeping for hours, we still wake up exhausted. If you also feel mentally drained because of stress, overthinking, or a hectic lifestyle, then Yoga Nidra can become a beautiful practice for you. If you are beginning your wellness journey, you may also enjoy reading 10 Minutes Yoga for Beginners Daily Routine.
First of all, I want you to honestly confess something: Do you actually enjoy stretching, difficult poses, and holding yoga postures for long periods? If yes, amazing. But if not, then no worries at all, do not give up on yoga yet. Zen Algorithms has come up with a very interesting and beginner-friendly form of yoga that allows you to simply relax, whether it is on a yoga mat, a blanket, or even your own bed. This beautiful practice is known as Yoga Nidra, often called yogic sleep or conscious sleep. The most fascinating part about Yoga Nidra is that even 45 minutes of practice can make you feel as refreshed as if you had taken a deep 3-hour nap. If you are looking for an easy, pose-free way to release stress, calm your mind, and deeply relax your body, then you are absolutely at the right place. Unlike ordinary sleep, where we unconsciously carry our stress and worries into rest, Yoga Nidra helps us relax with awareness and intention, allowing the body and mind to slowly let go of tension, overthinking, and emotional exhaustion.
What Is Yoga Nidra?
Yog nidra, or yogic sleep, is a way to sleep consciously. It is a state of consciousness between waking and sleeping, a technique that instantly recharges and brings incredible quietness and clarity within you.
Sometimes people may mistake it with meditation, yoga nidra, and meditation are similar but not the same; there are overlaps, but there are also key differences. In yoga nidra, you are lying down, and the goal is to move into a deep state of conscious awareness sleep, which is a deeper state of relaxation with awareness. This state involves moving from consciousness while awake to dreaming and then to not dreaming while remaining awake. On the other hand, in meditation, you are sitting in a wakeful state of consciousness while focusing on the mind and observing the thoughts, and letting them come and go. You can explore more traditional teachings on Yoga Nidra through the Bihar School of Yoga.
Benefits of Yoga Nidra
Study suggests that yoga nidra works with the Autonomic nervous system, which is the system that works without our conscious efforts, like breathing, heartbeat, blood flow, and digestion. This system includes the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. Basically, the sympathetic nervous system is responsible for the fight or flight mode, and in meditation, we focus on the sympathetic nervous system to calm it down and activate the parasympathetic nervous system more. When these are balanced, it is good for our digestion, immunity, and overall health. In yoga nidra, the body is in deeper relaxation, and it releases the hormone called melatonin, which is a very powerful antioxidant and can strengthen the immune system and bring down our cortisol levels.
Hence both meditation and yoga nidra brings almost same benefits but with different efforts, and the best part is once you start doing yoga nidra you will feel more like doing asanans staying active and taking care of your body and mind, this is because of the melatonin it is such a magical hormone which brings positivity in our mind and make us do things which are necessary to live a healthy and good life.
Step-by-Step Yoga Nidra Practice
Well, there are mainly 8 steps to do yoga nidra, which we will understand one by one.
Step 1 – Settling or Initial relaxation:
This is the first step, which is used to bring down the body from gross to calm, from outward to inward, so basically the practitioner starts with comforting himself, becoming more aware of his body and breath, and the practitioner starts moving inward.
Step 2 – Intention, Sankalpa:
During sankalpa, the practitioner create and short statement depending on his heart’s deepest longing. This stage is very essential because it trains our mind to think in a particular direction and even shapes our personality, which will take us to our goal. In this stage,e the sankalpa is repeated a few times in the mind to bring belief and faith towards that particular goal.
Step 3 – Body rotation or rotation of consciousness:
This is a very interesting step because at this step the awareness is rotated throughout the body, so the question is, what actually is this? Here we go, so we just need to start from the toes and focus and feel it. Maybe we can visualize it,t release the tension, and similarly go till your scalp, covering all the body parts. This way, you can relax and calm down each part of the body.
Step 4 – Breath and Energy Awareness:
This step is all about simple awareness of breath. We just need to focus on our breath, or maybe we can just count the inhale and exhale cycle. This simple technique can give deeper relaxation and can awaken higher energy in almost all parts of the body.
Step 5 – Sense Perception:
This step will let you experience opposite emotions or sensations without judging or reacting to them. This can strengthen the willpower and relax emotional stress by stimulating the opposite hemisphere of the brain. How does it work? So basically, we have to imagine a contrary scenario, let’s say we are angry or maybe frustrated, then we simply have to just imagine for a few minutes how happy we are, how we look when we smile, how it sounds when we laugh.
Step 6 – Visualization:
This stage induces mental relaxation by stirring the memory and removing the disturbing materials from our mind. Any thought or imagination that is causing unnecessary stress is removed in this step.
Step 7 -Sankalpa:
Again, we go to the sankalpa. In the first step, we learned about the sankalpa. Again, this is a repeat of the same. Basically, this is done to remind our mind of the promise we made in starting this, which will help you to imprint this thought on our subconscious mind, and thus our subconscious mind will pursue us to reach our goal.
Step 8 – Externalization:
This is the very important step of yoga nidra, if we move back from yoga nidra directly then we might end up in disoriented and confused, hence the practitioner is advised to come back to the awaken state with intention just same we went to nidra only we need to follow the reverse path, focus on breath, then on body, then on surrounding and finally gently move the body.
Final Thoughts on Yoga Nidra
We have understood what Yoga Nidra is, the benefits related to this, and the process of doing this. Let’s start this wonderful and super easy, relaxing form of yoga. Once you start with this, the river of positivity will start flowing within you, and you will be the best version of yourself in every aspect of life, whether it is physical, mental, or financial.