Yoga Nidra utilizes your body’s natural ability to heal itself

Let us imagine that you were a mobile phone. If you were, yoga nidra would be like plugging yourself into a deeper state of consciousness (the charger), which is plugged into the even deeper state of cosmic consciousness (the source of electricity) and coming back out with more energy in your battery (your mind).

Yoga Nidra works by helping to restore balance to our autonomic nervous system. The sympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for activating our stress response, prepares us for potential threats, as it releases hormones like adrenaline and cortisol, which provide us with extra energy to act on the threat (either fight, flight, or freeze). It is designed for acute, immediate threats, like fending off an intruder, or a dangerous animal. It is not designed for the type of consistent, never-ending barrage of low-to-moderate grade (ie. chronic) stress than most of us experience in modern society. With Yoga Nidra, we are teaching our system to disengage the sympathetic nervous system, and activate the parasympathetic (rest + digest) nervous system. Deep Yoga Nidra also puts us into delta brainwave states, which triggers the hypothalamus to release GHRH (growth hormone), which stimulates growth, cell regeneration, and cell reproduction.

When we restore balance to our system, the natural healing mechanisms of our mind and body take care of the rest on its own. Thus, Yoga Nidra can help you recover from stress, reduce overthinking, ease anxiety, and enable the restoration of a healthy mental, physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual balance in our lives.

You can “learn” how to fall asleep, and stay asleep

A common issue I hear from many people (including myself) is the following: Why is it so dang hard to fall asleep at night?? Why does my brain decide to awaken me from my pleasant cozy slumber to start rambling on about vague, incoherent worries and concerns like “those milk chocolate-coated wafer cookies you ate this afternoon are going to haunt you when you turn 55 years old—heed my warning, for I am your Brain, your One true master.”

With a regular Nidra practice, you are “responding” to your brain with the following: “Hey Brain, I appreciate your concern, but shhhhhhhhhhhhhh.”

When you are deep into a yoga Nidra practice, you are accessing lower frequency brainwave states—theta and delta—which are associated with deep sleep and relaxation. In our normal waking life, we spend most of our time in higher frequency alpha and beta states, which allow us to carry out various necessary functions like driving, walking, and working. Alpha and beta waves use significantly more energy than theta and delta waves, so when you wake up in the middle of the night, it is likely because your brain is totally juiced up on those high frequency waves when it should be resting in theta and delta waves. 

So when you practice Yoga Nidra, you gradually begin to experience better sleeping patterns: you stay asleep longer, you wake up fewer times per night, and you feel more refreshed in the morning. You’re giving Master Brain a lesson in chilling the heck out. Brain chill = You chill. You are essentially getting all of the benefits of sleeping without actually needing to fall asleep.

Replace old, subconscious programming

While the sleep and healing benefits are themselves enough to make Yoga Nidra an essential personal practice, for this author, what really makes Yoga Nidra a complete practice is the effectiveness of intention setting, or sankalpa. Of course, this can be integrated into any other yoga or meditative practice; however, with Yoga Nidra, sankalpa is especially powerful because we are engaged in a state of deep, conscious relaxation within the sacred hallways of the subconscious mind. Here, we can perform some real work with regards to uprooting “old programs”.

The thing about the mind is that it is not just in our head. When we drop into deeper levels of the subconscious mind, we are deepening our awareness beyond the familiar “thinking” mind, and into a full body, trance-like awareness. It is similar to a hypnotic state in which we become more suggestive, more open to instructions; but in Yoga Nidra, the practitioner has more control over their intentions—the instructor’s role is simply to guide you into that ideal conscious state. Once we’re there, we can direct our intention as general or as specific as we feel capable of. If our mind is particularly busy or distressed, we can choose more general intentions (eg. I wish to feel less anxious; I wish to welcome more Love into my life). When we are more regulated and our mind is clearer, we can begin to hone in further (eg. I will focus on finishing my art project; I wish to feel more connected to the Cosmos and to imbue this connection in all of my actions). 

Even if we cannot generate a clear intention, a regular Nidra practice will often clear out a lot of the clutter that we don’t even realize is blocking us from expressing our awareness fully and completely. The practice itself often reveals pathways to your goals and desires that may have been long forgotten or buried in the dust of your karmas. It is a time-tested means of nourishing and restoring our inherent natural state of pure loving and creative being-ness.

If you’re interested in becoming a certified Yoga Nidra instructor, sign up for Karma Teachers’ 25-hr Yoga Nidra training! Even if you do not intend to facilitate classes, you will learn how to cultivate and integrate your own personal practice, and you will have the chance to meet other like minded and curious teachers and practitioners.

You can learn more about Karma Teachers’ 25HR Yoga Nidra Training here:

Be sure to check out our Calendar page to see when we’ll be offering this training next.