Yoga Nidra - What You Need to Know

Jun 15

Several people lay in corpse pose or savasana on yoga mats, relaxed and practicing Yoga Nidrā. — Doing Yoga Nidrā - The practice of “un-doing”

What is Yoga Nidra?

Yoga Nidrā, literally translated from Sanskrit as "yogic sleep," is a powerful relaxation and meditation technique derived from ancient yogic practices. It is a systematic method that induces a deep state of relaxation while remaining awake and aware, staying in the liminal space between being awake and asleep.

The practice of Yoga Nidrā is typically performed laying on your back or side with whatever you require to be comfortable and truly relaxed. When guided by a teacher, they may offer suggestions or ask questions to ease you into a relaxed state, guide you in a “body scan”, or use any other sorts of meditation techniques to ease you into the trance-like Yoga Nidrā state.

Is Yoga Nidra really ancient?

Yes! While many modern Yoga Nidrā teachers may claim to have “discovered” Yoga Nidrā or be the only teacher who knows the special secret ingredients, this isn’t true. Many different indigenous groups had different forms of liminal hypnosis, trances, or sleep work, but of course, Yoga Nidrā has its history in India and goddess worship long before commercialized western yoga classes. While the practice is believed to go back 10,000 years, the first written evidence referring to Yoga Nidrā is in a 6th-century hymn to the goddess Yoga Nidrā Shakti Devī. She is the divine personification of the very powerful force of sleep. She is so powerful in fact, she holds the god Visnu, sustainer of the universe, under her control, requiring him to sleep like anyone else.

In the tales, she removes her hold on Vishnu when he is needed to protect Brahma, the creative power of life itself, from demons all through the night, allowing him to fight longer and harder. There is also a tale from the Rāmāyana where Yoga Nidrā Shakti Devī causes a princess to sleep for 14 years, like the western Sleeping Beauty, to show sleep is a power no one can resist, royalty or gods included. Yogic sleep meditation is also mentioned in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras (7th century), and in the Hatha Yoga Pradīpikā (~1450); “For one who has attained yogic sleep, time becomes nonexistent.”

Is modern Yoga Nidra authentic?

Depending on who you ask and your definition of authenticity, yes and no. The practice is of course rooted in ancient Indian Hindu goddess worship, but that is not often how it is practiced today. While we still use many of the same techniques, our perspective on the practice and our motivation for doing the practice in the first place has changed greatly. At the turn of the 19th century, western doctors became much more interested in relaxation and wellness, due to their worries of the speed and exertion of industrialized society. This led many Western physicians to suggest meditation, hypnosis, and many other similar processes to “relax” for overall wellness, not necessarily giving any credit to the indigenous groups they were taking these ideas from.

This also affected modern-day Yoga Nidrā in the way that there has been a lot of scientific research into the effects of meditations, use of affirmations, sleep brain waves, and more, causing modern Yoga Nidrā to also have these focuses. Even modern Yoga Nidrā schools in India incorporate Western science in their practices now.

The short answer? No; but in learning the origins of these practices we help to give credit where it's due instead of mindlessly using sacred practices without a second thought.

What does all this science say about Yoga Nidra?

I could go on for days talking about the benefits of Yoga Nidrā, but what’s most important is that it can benefit you in whatever way you need. The Yoga Nidra Network has an excellent collection of scientific papers discussing all of the research done around Yoga Nidrā that can be found here: https://www.yoganidranetwork.org/academic-resources/. Yoga Nidrā has been shown to help soldiers with PTSD lead normal lives, insomniacs get better sleep, drug addicts stay clean, and can even help to ease the layperson’s menstrual pain and chronic pain in all forms.

Not only that, but here are just a few of the generalized key benefits: deep relaxation, stress reduction, improved sleep, enhanced self-awareness, emotional healing, increased mindfulness, enhanced creativity and intuition, mental clarity and memory improvement, emotional balance, and spiritual growth. Yoga Nidrā has been proven to provide many of the same brain waves as the deepest and most restorative times of sleep, making it an excellent practice for anyone.

So what about Yoga Nidra is authentic?

One of the most important aspects of Yoga Nidrā is still used in practice today and is as ancient as the practice itself. It may be called many different things, like a “body scan” or “guided awareness”, but the practice of going down the body in many tiny sections, relaxing each and every body part individually, is a core part of Yoga Nidrā practice. In fact, in the goddess hymns that first mention Yoga Nidrā, the guided awareness is called “the seed of the practice”.

Another element found in some modern Yoga Nidrā practices that has ancient roots is the idea of Sankalpa, or setting an intention for your practice. This isn’t included in every form of modern Yoga Nidrā, but historically it was considered very important, setting a Sankalpa. Sankalpa is often mistranslated from Sanskrit as “resolve” or simply “affirmation”, but in actuality, it can mean “intuitive arising of a heartfelt calling”, or “soul’s purpose”.

What now?

Well, if you are interested in learning more about Yoga Nidrā, I have provided a lot of links to helpful websites and listed some helpful books to read! It is often suggested to perform Yoga Nidrā the first time, or even the first few times, with the guidance of a teacher, and luckily we have a workshop coming up this month at The Yoga Common NYC location with David Ito, which I have linked below as well. We hope to continue providing workshops and opportunities for you to try this practice of “un-doing”.