Yoga Nidra Guided Meditation for Daily Relaxation

Yoga Nidra Guided Meditation: Benefits Research and Practices

Here, we discuss the purpose, practices, stages, research and benefits of yoga nidra guided meditation in details.  Yoga Nidra guided meditation is systematic technique aims to focus the mind to achieve higher levels of relaxation and increase wellness. Yoga nidra helps cell regeneration and rejuvenation, and both help decrease anxiety and improve mood and overall health.

Yoga nidra systematically utilizes the neurological stages of sleep to engage the participant’s natural capacity for self healing, balancing hormones and brain chemistry, improving sleep, and mood regulation. This is an excellent practice for the people who have trouble in getting sound sleep, or mind is always wandering, or suffering from stress and anxiety.

What is Yoga Nidra?

Yoga Nidra is a conscious relaxation technique. Nidra means sleep and yoga means awareness. Hence, yoga nidra means “‘sleep with awareness”.  Yoga Nidra is also known as ‘yogic sleep’ or ‘sleep with deep relaxation.’ However, when we speak of Yoga Nidra, it is a relaxation much more intense than ordinary sleep and it means sleeping after eliminating all the normal worries and anxieties from the mind. It is a practice in which you consciously relax each and every part of the body. It gives you a comfortable blissful and higher quality of sleep altogether.

What is the Purpose of Yoga Nidra?

Yoga nidra primarily aims to tune and harmonize the body and mind together.  It promotes deep rest and relaxation, which is not possible by normal sleep or through your general meditation practices. It is a kind of sleep in which you do not lose consciousness. The process of body scan and breath awareness alone can be practiced to calm the nervous system, leading to less stress and better health.

What are the Benefits of Yoga Nidra?

Yoga Nidra is a full-body relaxation and deep awareness program, where your conscious mind relaxes and the deeper levels of the mind– the subconscious and unconscious states awaken. Twenty minutes yoga Nidra is like 4 hours of normal sleep. It stimulates the body’s nervous system in a way that you will get positive impact in your life. Yoga nidra can help lower blood pressure and cholesterol and improve blood glucose fluctuations and symptoms associated with diabetes. It also helps insomnia patients to sleep. The main benefits are:

  • Relax your body and mind
  • Effortlessly release your stress
  • Make you feel light and energetic
  • Improve your sleep quality
  • Improve your memory and brain power
  • Increase your immunity

Benefits of Yoga Nidra

How do you do Yoga Nidra?

Practicing yoga nidra is very easy. Just buy and download the mp3 yoga nidra files and run it in your laptop, computer or mobile and listen to it in a comfortable way. You need to give yourself about 10 to 25 minutes for the whole process of “Yoga Nidra”. These simple guided yoga nidra deep relaxation exercises can help you to conserve and channelize your energy in a constructive fashion.
Before starting this mp3 meditation. Sit or lie comfortably. You may not need special  meditation chair or cushion, just lie down comfortably on bed. Close your eyes. You don’t need to make any effort to control or count your breath. Just listen the mp3 easy instructions. It will guide you to deep relaxation and meditation.

What are the Stages of Yoga Nidra?

Yoga Nidra has of eight stages, out of which, four are primary and other four stages are secondary. The eight stages are: Relaxation, Intention, Rotation of Consciousness, Breath Awareness, Emotional Relaxation, Visualization, Sankalpa or “resolve”, and Externalization of Awareness.

Eight Stages of Yoga Nidra

Yoga Nidra for Better Sleep

The practice of yoga nidra for sleep can help release muscle tension, slow down the heart rate, lower blood pressure and regulate better breathing. It can help you to get a calmer, relaxed state of mind and a better good night sleep. Researchers found that the major cause behind irregular sleep is stress. Yoga nidra helps to eliminate the stress and soothe the body and helps to release the mind from the confusing and contradictory thoughts. As a result it provides better sleep.

Can Yoga Nidra Replace Sleep?

Yoga nidra can be practiced at bedtime to improve the quality of  your sleep but it cannot be a total substitute for your actual sleep.  Yoga nidra can improve your relaxation and stress, strain and anxiety. Sleep is vital for your health and sleep of about seven to eight hours are normally healthy.  However,  one hour of yoga nidra practice is equivalent to four hours of sleep. This is due to the series of brain waves experienced along the way.

Yoga Nidra Scientific Research

Yoga nidra takes you down into an even deeper brain-wave state. One that can’t be reached through normal sleep. Researches also indicate that Yoga Nidra can be used as a therapeutic technique to cure psychological disorders like anxiety, hostility, insomnia etc, and psychosomatic diseases like asthma, coronary heart disease, cancer, hypertension etc.  A 2016 study showed that practicing yoga nidra improved anxiety, depression, and overall well-being.  A 2018 yoga nidra study showed the improvement  on the anxiety, depression and mental health levels of college professors. A 2019 yoga nidra research shows the neuroscience to enter the deepest states of meditation (sam?dhi) and remain there even when otherwise active in the world (tur?ya). Yoga nidra help activate the relaxation response and improve the functioning of the nervous system and endocrine system, which balances your hormones.

Yoga Nidra Guided Meditation

Our yoga nidra deep relax guided meditation is a set of seven mp3 file and one pdf file.  Yoga Nidra Deep Relax can help you sleep and relax almost effortlessly. All you need to do is, loosely listen to and follow the voice of the guide. The seven tracks of the yoga nidra guided meditation are as follows:

  1. Track 1:  Introduction to Yoga Nidra Deep Relax Guided Meditation. Run Time: Approximately 12 Minutes.
  2. Track 2: Yoga Nidra Deep Relax Guided Meditation Long. Run Time: Approximately 25 Minutes
  3. Track 3: Yoga Nidra Deep Relax Guided Meditation Short. Run Time: Approximately 12 Minutes
  4. Track 4: Yoga Nidra Deep Relax Guided Meditation Very Short. Run Time: Approximately 7 Minutes
  5. Track 5: Yoga Nidra Deep Relax Guided Meditation Long with Music. Run Time: Approximately 25 Minutes
  6. Track 6: Yoga Nidra Deep Relax Guided Meditation Short with Music. Run Time: Approximately 12 Minutes
  7. Track 7: Yoga Nidra Deep Relax Guided Meditation Very Short with Music. Run Time: Approximately 7 Minutes