Meditation as medicine: Why yoga nidra works for mental health
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“A regular Yoga Nidra practice is a way to support overall brain health, memory, cognition, depression, anxiety, rumination, insomnia, and many other physical, mental and emotional symptoms of stress and trauma.”
- Ericka Thomas
Transcript
Ep 167 Meditation as medicine. Why Yoga Nidra works for mental health.
NSDR non sleep deep rest is all the rage these days, thank you Andrew Huberman. But it has been around in the form of Yoga Nidra for thousands of years. What does yoga Nidra have that NSDR doesn’t? And will you miss it?Today on the Work IN we’ll take a look at what’s really going on in a Yoga Nidra Meditation, what’s missing from an NSDR meditation and why you may want to dip your toe into more traditional forms.
NSDR is the stripped down version of yoga nidra. Very stripped down. Like the naked and afraid version before they started giving everyone a firestarter and a pot. While I applaud the effort to bring this style of meditation into the mainstream for its long list of mental and physical health benefits, I wonder what we are robbing ourselves of by leaving out the good stuff from traditional yoga nidra.
The science of yoga nidra.
What’s really going on?
During yoga nidra the sensory motor cortex in the brain receives information (through the senses) that triggers a response in the hypothalamus. The hypothalamus is the area of the brain that controls the autonomic nervous system including the stress response. Basically everything that needs to happen in the body automatically in order to keep us alive.The Hypothalamus is also a part of the Reticular Activating System. This system is responsible for sleep and wakefulness patterns but it’s also responsible for our spotlight of attention. This is an important piece to why yoga nidra works because the brain only knows what we tell it. So when we set an intention and repeat it to ourselves this area of the brain elevates that intention as a higher priority.
The hypothalamus is connected to the pituitary gland. This is a pea sized gland that sits at the base of the brain directly behind the third eye. The pituitary is the master gland and controls the functions of many other endocrine glands including the adrenals (HPA axis) as well as the ovaries and testes. Just as a refresher when we say endocrine glands and the endocrine system we’re talking about hormones. SO it’s no wonder that when we’re living under chronic stress or move into overwhelm associated with past or present trauma it can present as hormone dysregulation.
The point is that this area of the brain the sensory motor cortex, reticular activating system and the HPA axis are where neurologists believe the action of Yoga Nidra takes place.
The first question is always does something work? Closely followed by how and why does it work? And that’s kind of where they are right now with Yoga Nidra. We know that even stripped down guided meditations like NSDR (thank you Andrew Huberman) can help reduce anxiety, improve mood and improve sleep quality. Studies using the IRest protocols report significant improvements in these areas and depression when compared to controls (https://www.irest.org/irest-research ) . iRest is a guided meditation protocol that more closely resembles traditional yoga nidra than NSDR. Meaning that includes the intention setting parts.It’s those parts of the meditation that are the levers of change and healing from the nervous system and throughout the body.
Irest is a 10 stage process. You can read those on their website and the link will be in the show notes. Traditional Yoga Nidra has 8 stages.
Critical pieces to Yoga Nidra:
Settling in/ Internalization In yoga this is what we might describe as pratyahara or sense withdrawal. It can be challenging to be still, to step out of your day and quiet the monkey mind. Even for 5 minutes. It isn’t always easy to be with our thoughts and feelings and for many people this is what stops them from meditating at all.
Intention setting (sankalpa purpose or resolve) this where we get to exercise the power of the mind body connection. It happens through that RAS that I described earlier. The brain lives in a dark cave it doesn’t know anything but what we tell it. We forget that if we want something different to happen with our experience we need to tell the brain to change its focus. There’s a reason that if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always gotten. That’s true in life and it’s true in the body.
Directed attention (rotation of consciousness/body rotation) This is the body scan. We take that spotlight that we just turned on with our intention and shine it on each and every part of the body. We step back and observe the body without judgment. You might be surprised at how difficult it is to connect with certain areas of the body at first. We spend a lot of time cutting ourselves off from ourselves.
Breath and energy awareness - The breath is the fastest way for us to communicate with the nervous system. Practicing intentional breathing techniques can help move the body and mind into coherence and results in measurable physical benefits like improved HRV, blood pressure, cognition and even things like insulin resistance.
Sensory perception is a practice of opposites - here the brain gets to practice feeling without judgment or expectation. It can be feeling physical sensations like hot and cold or heavy and light or it might be emotional opposites.
Visualization This is a flex for the visual and sensory motor cortex system. It’s a crazy fun fact about the brain that whatever you imagine the brain/body thinks it's actually happening. Visualization is a way to start to change your story.
Sankalpa(reinforce the purpose or resolve) This is where we reinforce your original purpose. And because the brain believes everything you think it’s important to restate your sankalpa as the present truth as if it’s already true. What the brain believes becomes it’s new pattern. A new operating system, if you will.
Externalisation - the final piece is externalization, where we slowly bring ourselves back to the reality of the here and now. Closing to loop.
During Yoga nidra the intention is to hover in the liminal state between consciousness and sleep. This is the hypnagogic state that occurs as we’re falling asleep. SOmetimes because of the layers of awareness we can have some strange dreams. Or feel like we’re on the edge of a dream. It’s technically stage 1 sleep but in a guided yoga nidra the brain looks like it’s in deep sleep, throwing off theta waves left and right. Deep sleep is where the brain does all of its rest and repair work. They say 1 hour of yoga nidra is equal to (not a replacement for) 4 hours of deep sleep. All of these stages activate different areas of the brain helping to make new connections.
Chronic stress and trauma can leave our brain and nervous system undernourished and overworked. Insomnia, or a lack of sleep, especially deep sleep can be very detrimental. Yoga nidra is a way to practice slipping into that in-between state, eventually making it easier to not only get to sleep but stay asleep and also get back to sleep when you wake up. It’s normal to wake up in the middle of the night by the way. We don’t need to get hung up on it.
A regular Yoga Nidra practice is a way to support overall brain health, memory, cognition, depression, anxiety, rumination, insomnia, and many other physical, mental and emotional symptoms of stress and trauma.
If you only have 5 minutes, then by all means go for the nsdr. You’ll get no shade from me. Something is always better than nothing. But don’t turn away a traditional form of yoga nidra. There’s a reason people love it. And I think you will too.
Thanks for listening today. If you like what you heard and you want more, head over to savagegracecoaching.com/theworkin for all the show notes for this and other great episodes of the work in podcasts. Plus you’ll find lots of free resources to build resilience and all the latest in our studio on main street.
Thanks everybody and remember stop working out start working IN
Hey there!
I’m your host Ericka Thomas. I'm a resilience coach and fit-preneur offering an authentic, actionable realistic approach to personal and professional balance for coaches in any format.
Savage Grace Coaching is all about bringing resilience and burnout recovery. Especially for overwhelmed entrepreneurs, creators and coaches in the fitness industry.
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