Sleep Meditation
On the Humaya app, you’ll hear us talk a lot about a practice called Yoga Nidra. Yoga Nidra is not a physical yoga practice, it is a meditation practice that actually means “yogic sleep.”
It is a guided experience where you are effortlessly led into slower brainwave states and deep states of consciousness. You are guided into deep relaxation and sleep — all you have to do is lie down and listen.
Thirty minutes of Yoga Nidra is actually said to be the equivalent of two hours of sleep! This is because, by traveling down through slower brain wave states, the body is able to experience a level of deep healing and relaxation that can’t be reached from a wakeful state.
This powerful practice has been used by the U.S. Dept. of Defense to help veterans with PTSD, and it has been shown to improve sleep, depression, anxiety, low self-worth, chronic pain, and emotional reactivity. It has helped the founding women of Huma Rising overcome things like depression, eating disorders, self-doubt, and so much more.
Yoga Nidra is unique in that it brings up unresolved feelings, emotions, and thought patterns in a way that doesn’t activate the stress response. Instead, by soothing the nervous system, it allows for the resolution of emotional experiences and subsequent rewiring of the brain.
This means that with practice, Yoga Nidra can help us heal the parts of ourselves that keep us feeling stuck, small, and limited. It can help us embody our inherent power — our incredible capacity to transform. It can help us reconstruct our belief systems to show up in the world with a sense of groundedness, authenticity, and deep self-trust.
Download this FREE Yoga Nidra sleep meditation, “Yoga Nidra for Safety,” (28 minutes) by filling out the form below. if you enjoy the practice, check out the Humaya app for many more sleep meditation practices, Yoga Nidras, and other techniques for deep healing.