Practice Deep Relaxation with Yoga Nidra

Yoga Nidra is a potent yogic technique that teaches you to relax consciously and deeply. It is a systematic method of physical, mental and emotional relaxation. Yoga Nidra is both a deep relaxation and a meditation practice done from a lying down position. It’s also one of the most comfortable relaxation and meditation techniques, making it suitable for all levels of experience and ability.

Yoga Nidra can be thought of as ‘yogic sleep’. Yoga means union and Nidra means sleep. In Yoga Nidra the purpose is to unite your awareness with the act of deep relaxation the looks like sleep. Externally it may look like you are sleeping, but internally your awareness is fully awake and you are conscious of the deeper layers of the mind.

In Yoga Nidra your awareness hovers on the borderline between waking and sleeping. This is known as the hypnogogic state. Being in this state gives you access to your subconscious mind. And there you come to know yourself and your mind.

When practicing Yoga Nidra it is not necessary to concentrate or try very hard. All that is necessary is that you sustain awareness of the vocal instructions and follow these instructions mentally.

A full Yoga Nidra practice has 8 stages and usually takes around 30 minutes to complete. The sequencing of the 8 stages is essential to its effectiveness.
The stages take the practitioner on a journey from gross external awareness to subtle internal perception and back out again.

Stages of Yoga Nidra

1. Initial preparation

This initial stage is for settling and getting ready for the practice both physically and mentally. Here you make sure that you’ll be warm and comfortable and that you won’t be disturbed for the duration of the exercise.

2. Sankalpa or resolve

In Yoga Nidra we make use of a sankalpa which can be translated as a resolve. The sankalpa is repeated 3 times at the beginning and the end of the practice. Find your goal or intention of what you want to experience or receive using as few words as possible. Once formulated, say this phrase in your head three times slowly with all of your focus.

3. Rotation of awareness through the different body parts

In this stage you are instructed to move your awareness through the parts of the body. The rotation is always the same. With repetition you get to know the body rotation off by heart. Over time the body builds a memory which associates the body rotation with relaxation. The relaxation response becomes easier and easier to activate each time you practise Yoga Nidra.
The purpose of this stage is to simultaneously awaken prana or vitality in each body part while also letting go of tension in each part. There is a neuronal map of the physical body in the brain known as the motor homunculus or ‘the little man’. All the body parts which awareness passes through in Yoga Nidra are located in that brain map.
By moving the awareness systematically through all the different body parts, the physical body is transcended and the awareness is drawn within.

4. Breath awareness

Here the awareness is directed towards the breath. This could be watching the breath at the nostrils, chest, or abdomen. Or it could be in the passage between the navel and the throat. Often one is instructed to be aware of each incoming and outgoing breath by counting them mentally. Awareness of the breath develops relaxation and concentration. The focus on the breath also shifts the awareness to a more subtle level.

5. Opposite feelings and sensations

In this stage, pairs of opposite feelings or sensations, such as heat and cold, heaviness and lightness, pain and pleasure, are recalled and experienced fully. Over time the student’s ability to evoke these sensations improves. The ability to evoke these sensations so that they are truly felt, is a reflection of an awake and creative mind.
Through evoking and letting go of these opposite sensations the practitioner also learns detachment. We can learn to observe the sensation of either hot or cold without adding a judgment that the sensation is either bad or good. We learn that sensations are temporary and that it is possible not to react to sensations.

6. Visualisation

In the stage of visualisation, the awareness is taken to the dark space in front of the closed eyes, known as chidakasha. The student is instructed to visualize either random, unconnected images, or connected scenes.
For example, random images could be, a car moving on a road, a horse, a gum tree, a sunset, the ocean, field grass, a standing dog, the color purple, a spider web, a red rose. This technique of random, unconnected images is to release mental tensions.
Sometimes connected scenes or a story visualization are used. Story visualizations are most commonly visualizing yourself walking through a nature landscape and being aware of the different sights, sounds, and smells.
Story visualizations require a little more concentration and their purpose is more to develop the capacity to visualize.

7. Sankalpa again is repeated 3 times

8. Externalisation

In the last stage, time is spent externalizing the awareness from the subtle inner dimension back out to the external world. Externalisation is done by moving awareness through the physical body, the breath, and the outside sounds.

Yoga Nidra has many health benefits such as alleviating stress, tension, anxiety, and insomnia.


Yoga Nidra has many health benefits such as alleviating stress, tension, anxiety, and insomnia.