Yoga Nidra for Sleep
A guided practice in my voice, made for bedtime. Put it on in bed with the lights off, and let yourself fall asleep somewhere in the middle of it. That is what it is for.
Yoga Nidra for Sleep
It does not wake you at the end. My voice stops, the music stays a little longer, and then fades.
What yoga nidra is
Yoga nidra means yogic sleep. You lie down, and a voice moves your attention slowly: through the body, one part at a time, then to the breath, to opposite sensations like heavy and light, warm and cool, and to a few simple pictures. You do not have to make anything happen. You listen and follow, as much or as little as you can manage that night.
At the start and at the end you say a sankalpa to yourself, a short, heartfelt intention said as if it is already true. In this recording I use a simple one: I am allowed to rest. You can borrow it, or find your own words.
You may know the practice under other names. Non-sleep deep rest, or NSDR, is the name made popular more recently, usually in a more instructional style. iRest, or Integrative Restoration, is a structured version of the same practice. The style differs from teacher to teacher. The bones stay the same: lying still, attention moving slowly through the body, the breath, and an intention you come back to.
I recorded this one slow and soft, for night time, because what helps you sleep is a voice that asks very little of you.
Why sleep is so hard after trauma
After trauma, a lot of people stop sleeping well, and sleep often does not come back by itself when the worst is over. A body that had to stay on guard does not easily switch that off at night. Lying down in the dark with your eyes closed, not watching anything, can be the hardest position of the day for a body that is still braced.
So the night breaks into pieces. Falling asleep takes a long time, or it comes fast and then you are awake at two, at three, at four, alert and listening. For some people there are nightmares, and then sleep itself starts to feel risky.
In a 2006 review in CNS Drugs, Maher, Rego and Asnis report that between 70% and 91% of people with PTSD have trouble falling asleep or staying asleep, and that nightmares are reported by between 19% and 71%.
When sleep is measured in a sleep laboratory, the picture is similar. A 2019 meta-analysis of 31 sleep-lab studies by Zhang and colleagues in Sleep Medicine Reviews found that people with PTSD had less total sleep, less deep sleep, and more time awake after first falling asleep.
This is why I tell people that sleep after trauma takes real effort, and a lot of patience. Trying harder to fall asleep never works. The effort is in doing the same small, kind habits night after night, often for weeks before much changes. A practice like this one is one of them.
How to use the recording
- Listen in bed, lights off, lying the way you usually fall asleep.
- Start it, turn the screen face down, and keep the volume low.
- Fall asleep whenever you do. You do not need to hear the end.
- If paying attention to any part of the body feels uncomfortable, let that part go and stay with your breath until my voice moves on. You are not missing anything by skipping it.
- Use it on ordinary nights too, not only on the bad ones, so your body gets to know it.
- If you wake in the night and cannot settle, you can play it again.
What the research on yoga nidra can and cannot tell us
The research on yoga nidra and sleep is early, and the studies are small. Here is what there is so far.
In a small pilot trial, Datta and colleagues (2021, National Medical Journal of India) gave 41 adults with chronic insomnia either yoga nidra or CBT for insomnia (CBT-I), the main psychological treatment for insomnia. Both groups improved. As a pilot study, it does not give a clear answer about which works better.
Moszeik, von Oertzen and Renner (2022, Current Psychology) asked people to listen to a short online yoga nidra recording every day for 30 days and compared them with people on a waitlist (341 and 430 people). The yoga nidra group reported better sleep quality and lower stress. The effects were very small to small, and they were still there at the six-week follow-up.
A 2026 meta-analysis by Singh and colleagues in Sleep and Breathing brought together five studies. In the randomised trials the improvements were not statistically reliable, and the certainty of the evidence was rated very low, so the findings are preliminary.
So research suggests yoga nidra may help some people sleep a little better and feel less stressed. It is not a replacement for sleep. I offer it because it is gentle, it is free, and it gives your mind something soft to follow instead of the list of everything that went wrong today.