The Art of Yoga Nidra — Its Practice & Benefits | What is Yoga Nidra

In today’s competitive world, the constant workload and hunger to succeed has induced the feelings of stress, tiredness, and anxiety within our mind.

In between our hectic and stressful professional and personal lives, we all crave a few minutes of silence, peace, and relaxation.

Meet Yoga Nidra — an ancient yogic practice to find your mind in a more peaceful, collected state. A 45-minute session will provide various powerful benefits for your body, brain, and mind. And there are several Yoga Nidra courses online to help you master this ancient art of deep relaxation.

What is the Modern Practice of Yoga Nidra?

Yoga Nidra, widely known as “yogic sleep” or “effortless relaxation,” is the conscious state between wakefulness and sleep, allowing a sense of well-being and deep relaxation throughout your body.

Yoga Nidra originated from a tantric concept called Nyasa. The term “Yoga Nidra” was unknown in public till Swami Satyananda Saraswati introduced it in 1964. Effectively, Swami Satyananda modernized the practice of Yoga Nidra.

How Does Yoga Nidra Work?

As mentioned above, Yoga Nidra is a form of deep relaxation. A typical session lasts 30 to 45 minutes. The practitioner’s body rests comfortably relaxed in a savasana, i.e., corpse position, and the guru/teacher guides them through several stages with verbal instructions.

It begins with gradually developing concentration, asking ourselves what we want from life, and setting intentions to achieve those goals.

The teacher guides the student to concentrate their awareness on body sensations, breath, thoughts, and emotions, which develops “witness consciousness” — the understanding that we are more than our thoughts and recognizing ourselves as the one who is aware, i.e., the witness.

A forty-five-minute session of Yoga Nidra is equivalent to a 3-hour sleep.

Benefits of Yoga Nidra

Yoga Nidra has proven to rejuvenate your body by eliminating stress, sores, aches, and tiredness. Let’s dive into the 5 primary benefits of practicing Yoga Nidra:

1. Anyone Can Perform Yoga Nidra

The most significant advantage of Yoga Nidra is that it is one of the simplest and easiest yoga Asanas to perform. It doesn’t require any special efforts or endurance. There is no requirement to balance your body on one finger or place your foot behind your head. On the contrary, you have to let all that go during a session of Yoga Nidra.

All you need to do is to lie down in a corpse-like position, and your instructor does the rest. Therefore, this practice can get performed by anyone — from young children to aging individuals, beginners to advanced practitioners, and everyone in between.

2. There Is No Way to Perform It Incorrectly

Unlike traditional meditation practices that can be task-oriented or extremely specific, practicing Yoga Nidra can never go wrong.

As you lie down in Savasana, all you have to do is follow the instructor’s voice and maintain some subtle awareness of your body and breath.

The fascinating aspect of Yoga Nidra is that even if you fall asleep, you will still be doing it right, as your subconscious can still benefit from the practice even when the conscious mind checks out.

3. Reduces Stress and Anxiety

Amidst various ailments, stress and anxiety reside in some minds permanently. Yoga Nidra helps tackle and overcome these issues.

Yoga Nidra involves systematic muscle relaxation, and deep breathing helps calm your parasympathetic nervous system. Therefore, promoting rejuvenation and stress relief. A state of deep relaxation gets induced that can’t get achieved through an average meditation practice. The stages of breath awareness and body scan alone help calm the nervous system, leading to better health.

A Yoga Nidra session fills your mind with fresh, positive thoughts, detaching the past or the future tensions, leading to a stress-free life.

4. Improves Sleep, Reduces Insomnia

If you are rolling on the bed for 1 to 5 hours before finding any sleep, then Yoga Nidra is the solution for you.

Sleep deprivation and insomnia lead to mental stress, disorders, and immune suppression.

Incorporating Yoga Nidra improves your sleeping pattern significantly.

How? Yoga Nidra is responsible for slowing down the wavelengths traveling in your mind once you enter a sleep-like state, i.e., yogic sleep. Sensing the body and mindful breathing triggers a relaxation response throughout the body, which balances the right and left part of your brain and controls sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems to prepare your body for the yogic sleep.

There is a process that gets followed before shutting down your body and brain. Yoga Nidra trains your body and mind for this relaxation process for you to achieve a deeper state of sleep.

5. Changes Your Outlook Towards Life

Regularly practicing Yoga Nidra has all the potential to help you change, develop, or alter your lifestyle and routine for the better.

Over time, you’ll begin seeing the world with a different pair of eyes as you draw joy and strength from the present and your surroundings. Even in the darkest times, you will find it easier to discover a moment of happiness, joy, or appreciation.

By enhancing your ability as you move forward in life, Yoga Nidra enables you to enjoy every moment and cherish every opportunity presented in front of you.

A session with your inner self will allow you to develop a positive and fresh outlook on your life. During Yoga Nidra, the relaxation experienced would enable you to look at your personal and professional problems differently and tackle them with enthusiasm and promptness rather than getting defeated from the start.

If you wish to reconnect with yourself daily, bring more peace of mind into your routine, and achieve an ideal work/life balance, Yoga Nidra helps you significantly.

Conclusion

No matter how much we try to avoid and deny stress, anxiety, and tiredness, these feelings are embedded in our habits and mindset. Therefore, they are not going to perish in one day.

When practiced with care, patience, and sincerity, Yoga Nidra holds the power to drastically alter your feelings, mood, sensations, and more. It can make you feel relaxed and rested, energized, and soothed.

With so much to gain with minimal effort, a Yoga Nidra course is worth exploring.

Originally published at https://www.nadyoga.org on December 5, 2020.