Yoga Nidra: Supercharge Your Energy With This Power Nap On Steroids

I have a confession to make.  I struggle almost every day to stay resilient in the face of stress.

I realize the irony in admitting this.  After all, I work in the industry of self-improvement and resilience – an industry where most “experts” purport to live a perfect life, where happiness and success arise almost effortlessly.

I wish I could make a similar claim.  But even after over a decade of intensive mindfulness training, on some level, my experience of reality still feels utterly normal.  My mind is more open than it was before.  But my life still includes daily moments of overwhelm, fear, and profound suffering. 

So today, I thought that I would share my personal go-to practice for shifting my energy on those days when I feel anxious, overwhelmed by stress, or exhausted.  It’s an ancient practice called yoga nidra.

Of all the inner technologies of the mind, yoga nidra might just be the most powerful – at least for me.  Just 10 to 30 minutes of it leaves me feeling rested, recharged, and feeling the deep relaxation of a beach vacation in Mexico.  

What Is Yoga Nidra?

I stumbled upon this practice a four years ago thanks to my colleague and friend at Life Cross Training Priti Patel.  I then did an intensive training on yoga nidra with Rod Stryker– one of the great yoga masters of this generation – to go deeper into the practice.

The phrase yoga nidra essentially means “yogic sleep.”  In Sanskrit, nidra means “sleep” or “slumber.”  And, if you’ve ever done yoga, you’ve probably experienced a brief taste of it. In almost every yoga class, after finishing a sequence of vigorous postures, you end with 5-10 minutes of total relaxation (savasana), where you lie on your back and let yourself be effortless.  

That’s yoga nidra.   It’s like the dessert you get to eat at the end of the yoga meal.  And I’m here to tell you that you don’t have to do all that hard work of traditional yoga practice– that it’s OK to skip the salad and dive into the dessert. 

Why Yoga Nidra Works

The benefits of this practice begin with the brain science.  As you may know, our mental states correspond to patterns of electrical activity in the brain.  Just about all of our waking and sleeping moments can be divided into four states: