My best-kept
secret.
If I could give you one practice for the rest of your life, it would be this. योग निद्रा is lying-down, guided, conscious rest. Twenty minutes of it can replace an hour of sleep, and anyone can do it.
Awake at the edge of sleep
You lie down, comfortably, eyes closed. The body settles. Someone guides the attention — through the body, through the breath, through a few simple images. The brain drifts from beta (waking) to alpha (relaxed) to theta (the borderland between waking and sleep), and rests there.
You are not asleep. You are not awake the way the day is awake. You are conscious, but the nervous system has finally been allowed to put down what it has been carrying.
why it works so completelyTheta is where healing happens
In theta, the body repairs. Cortisol drops. Heart rate variability climbs. The immune system gets back to its quiet work. The mind sees its own patterns from a small distance, which is the only distance from which any pattern actually changes.
One twenty-minute session, the studies suggest, gives the nervous system what it would otherwise take an hour or more of sleep to gather.
how it's structuredSankalpa, rotation, breath, image, sankalpa
A guided yoga nidra has the same shape each time. A short settling. A सङ्कल्प — a quiet, simple intention you set at the start and again at the end. A rotation of awareness through the body, part by part. Breath awareness. A short visualisation. And then back to the sankalpa, before slowly returning to the room.
The first time you'll think nothing happened. The second time, you'll notice something. The third time, you'll find yourself looking forward to it.
The practice does not ask you to sleep. It asks you to rest the way the body forgot to.
A simple yoga nidra to begin
Come rest
with me.
I close every Saturday class with a yoga nidra. Come once and feel it. Twenty minutes that the rest of the week will lean on.
Reserve your place — Saturday 7:30 PM