Yoga Nidra for Beginners: What It Is and How to Practice

The first time I practiced yoga nidra, it was with Mukti. He’s one of my favorite teachers, and most people know him for his Thai massage work, so he’s someone who pays close attention to bodies. I lay down, he started guiding, and at some point I couldn’t quite tell where my body ended. I felt like I was floating. I could still hear his voice, but my thoughts had gone loose and drifty, the way they do right before sleep. I wasn’t asleep. I also wasn’t awake in any way I could have used for, say, a conversation.

Later I learned there’s a name for that in between: the hypnagogic state, the threshold between waking and sleep. Most of us pass through it every night on the way down without noticing. Yoga nidra is a way of lingering there on purpose.

It’s one of the practices I recommend most to people who tell me they can’t meditate. You don’t have to sit up straight. You don’t have to quiet your mind. You lie down and follow a voice. People are usually a little suspicious of how easy that sounds, and then they try it.

What yoga nidra is

Yoga nidra is often translated as yogic sleep. It’s a guided practice done lying down, where a teacher’s voice leads you through a sequence of stages while your body relaxes deeply and your awareness stays, more or less, switched on. The aim isn’t to fall asleep. It’s to get close to sleep and stay aware enough to notice what’s there.

What sets it apart from a general relaxation track is structure. Each stage has a particular job, and the order matters.

Where it comes from

The form most people practice today was systematized by Swami Satyananda Saraswati of the Bihar School of Yoga, who published his book Yoga Nidra in 1976. He adapted it from nyasa, an older tantric practice of placing awareness on different parts of the body. The phrase yoga nidra appears much earlier in Indian texts, but the guided, step by step practice is a modern creation.

The five stages I teach

The sequence I use follows that system. There’s a settling in at the beginning and a slow return at the end, and in between are five stages.

• Sankalpa. A short, sincere intention, said silently in the present tense, as if it’s already true. This is my favorite part. I think of it as planting a seed in the subconscious mind. You state it near the beginning, when you’re relaxed and less guarded, and again near the end.
• Rotation of consciousness. The teacher names parts of the body one after another, fairly quickly, and you move your attention to each one. Right thumb, index finger, middle finger. You don’t need to relax the part or do anything to it. You just go where the voice goes.
• Breath awareness. Noticing the breath as it is, sometimes counting breaths backward.
• Opposites. You’re guided to feel paired sensations, like heaviness and lightness or warmth and coolness, one after the other and sometimes both at once. It’s stranger and more interesting than it sounds.
• Visualization. A series of images named in quick succession, or a longer guided scene. You let them show up however they show up.

Then you return to your sankalpa and slowly come back.

How to practice as a beginner

Lie down in savasana, on your back, arms resting by your sides. Get comfortable enough that you won’t need to move for a while, then press play and follow along.

The main instruction I give is to try to stay awake, but let the experience unfold. Those two pull against each other a little, and that’s the point. If you grip too hard on staying alert, you won’t relax. If you let go completely, you’ll fall asleep. The practice happens somewhere in between.

If you do fall asleep, nothing is ruined. Your body still rested. Come back another day and try again.

Afterward, try not to jump straight back into your to do list. Get curious about whatever came up: an image during the visualization, a memory you hadn’t thought about in years, a feeling you didn’t expect, an idea that seemed to arrive from nowhere. Sometimes these mean something. Sometimes they’re just your brain being odd near the edge of sleep, which is also worth knowing.

“But I was awake the whole time”

This is something I see constantly. At the end of a nidra, I bring everyone back, they roll to their side and sit up, and someone tells me they were awake the entire time. Then I ask what they remember from the middle, and they can’t recall a thing. They aren’t being dishonest. They genuinely believe it. I find it both funny and reassuring, because I know exactly where they went.

That gap is common. You can drift in and out of the hypnagogic state without registering the moments you crossed over. It doesn’t mean you did it wrong.

What the research says

Yoga nidra has been studied more in recent years, and the findings are encouraging, with the usual caveat that the research is still young.

The most cited study is a small one from 2002. Danish researchers used PET scans on eight experienced practitioners and found increased dopamine release during yoga nidra in the ventral striatum, a part of the brain tied to reward. It’s a fascinating finding, and it’s also eight people.

More recently, a German team led by Esther Moszeik ran randomized controlled trials of recorded, online yoga nidra. Their 2020 study found that a practice of just 11 minutes led to small improvements in stress, sleep quality, and well-being compared with a waitlist group. A 2025 follow-up compared versions of 11 and 30 minutes. The longer practice reduced stress, anxiety, depression, rumination, and sleep problems, and was linked to a healthier daily cortisol rhythm, and both lengths showed some benefit. That’s good news if you don’t have half an hour.

I don’t need a scan to tell me I feel different after nidra. Still, I like knowing that what happens in my head while I’m lying there is something researchers can actually measure.

Try it

Keep going: What Is Sadhana? can help you make this a daily practice, and Heart Openers and the Parasympathetic Shift looks at rest from the body's side. If you'd like to practice with me in person, Sunday classes are here.

Sources

• Kjaer et al. (2002), Increased dopamine tone during meditation induced change of consciousness, Cognitive Brain Research
• Moszeik et al. (2020), Effectiveness of a short Yoga Nidra meditation on stress, sleep, and well-being, Current Psychology
• Moszeik et al. (2025), The Effects of an Online Yoga Nidra Meditation on Subjective Well-Being and Diurnal Salivary Cortisol, Stress and Health
• Yoga nidra history and origins