Anyone can practice Yoga Nidra to receive its valuable health benefits.
It’s important that we make time for our health now, so we don’t have to make time to fix our dis-ease later..
Yoga Nidra guides you through the layers of your being and drops you into deep relaxation where healing and true restoration can occur. The sequence of cues relaxes the body and awakens the unconscious and subconscious mind. The benefits of Yoga Nidra are plentiful and range from better sleep to reduced stress and beyond..
Here is a list of Yoga Nidra benefits:
It Reduces Stress.
Yoga Nidra promotes deep rest and relaxation that isn’t found in your average meditation. The stages of body scan and breath awareness alone calm the nervous system leading to less stress.
It Allows The Body to Restore.
Yoga Nidra induces a sleep-like state of relaxation. Although remaining conscious, the brain is guided into a sleep state, producing delta waves and theta waves.
When our brain waves have slowed down to the delta level of 1-4 cycles per second, this is when the body has an opportunity to rest, restore and heal.
It Can Be Used to Heal From Trauma.
Yoga Nidra has been proven to help people heal and move on from trauma. It has been proven that soldiers in the USA with post-traumatic stress disorder were given yoga nidra into a weekly treatment program, which helped reduce rage and anxiety and increase feelings of peace, relaxation and self-efficacy.
It Reduces PMS Symptoms.
Yoga Nidra is known to help women with menstrual irregularities. A survey on women with severe PMS found they improved significantly in the areas of their wellbeing, anxiety and depression by learning and applying a yoga nidra program, becoming less agitated, experiencing more energy and being overall more balanced emotionally.
It Reduces Chronic Pain.
Yoga Nidra when used as an intervention in treating chronic pain, gives the body time to rest, recover and restore, which brings down inflammation, improves the function of the immune system, therefore speeding up the healing process.
It Improves Sleep and Reduces Insomnia.
Yoga Nidra is known to improve insomnia and enhance sleep quality. Insomnia and sleep deprivation contribute to mental disorders, difficulty with stress management and immune system suppression. Yoga nidra trains the mind and body to relax and move more easily into the deeper states of sleep. Forty-five minutes of yoga nidra is equal to up to 3 hours of sleep! Sleep is vital to our health and wellbeing.
It Controls Heart Rate Variability.
Yoga Nidra is known for improving Heart Rate Variability. The practice of yoga nidra shifts the balance of the autonomic nervous system toward the parasympathetic nervous system. The parasympathetic nervous system is what governs our relaxation response, commonly referred to the “rest and digest” response.
It Can Alter Thought Patterns.
Yoga Nidra offers a Sankalpa (an intention or positive affirmation) which can facilitate life altering changes in one’s thought patterns, relationships and achievements. It is a tool that the yogis have been using for many years to achieve new and positive changes in one’s life.
It Helps Us To Be In The Moment
Yoga Nidra helps switch us out of doing and into being in the now so we can rest, offering a space to explore what you need in the moment as well as an opportunity to work on long-held emotions.
The Science behind Yoga Nidra
Yoga nidra has been proven effective in reducing stress and anxiety. A 2018 study published in the International Journal of Yoga found that yoga nidra was more effective than meditation at reducing both cognitive and physiological symptoms of anxiety. In the United States there has been a dramatic increase in hospitalizations due to stress in both men and women.
Yoga nidra guides the student into the deepest state of sleep where the brain produces theta (4-7 hertz) and delta waves (1-3 hertz), but the student remains conscious throughout. According to Theta Healing, “Theta State is a state of very deep relaxation; it is used in hypnosis and during REM Sleep. The brain waves are slowed down at a frequency of 4-7 cycles per second."
Delta waves on the other hand, are the slowest waves at 1-4 cycles per second and are experienced during deep dreamless sleep. When our brain waves have slowed down to the delta level, it is when our body has an opportunity to rest, restore and heal.
The National Sleep Foundation recommends that adults and young adults get 7-9 hours of sleep every night. Yoga Nidra is a good way to supplement your sleep if you’re not sleeping well at night. You could try yoga Nidra during your lunch break or give it a try right before bed — go ahead and crawl into bed and prepare yourself for a restful night of sleep.
Yoga Nidra classes at Yoga Shala
Yoga Nidra is offered as a weekly maintenance practice to calm the body and mind on Friday evenings at 5:30pm at the Yoga Shala in Fairfield. If you want to take your practice to another level, to better understand the power that lies in this easy yet extremely transformative practice, then our Yoga Nidra Immersion Workshop is for you!
