Yoga nidra improves deep sleep, which enhances attention, learning, memory and other cognitive tasks. Credit: Roger Parkes/ Alamy Stock Photo
Practising yoga nidra can improve sleep, learning and memory1. A two-week yoga nidra course involving healthy young men enhanced the quality and duration of their deep sleep.
This form of yoga is a low-cost, low-effort activity which might benefit sleep-deprived people, says a team of researchers at the Armed Forces Medical College in Pune.
Active forms of yoga focus on physical postures, breathing and muscle control, whereas yoga nidra guides people into conscious relaxation while lying down. Scientists gave 41 participants daytime yoga nidra sessions for two weeks, followed by cognitive tests and measurements to assess any changes in their sleep patterns.
The team found that yoga nidra improved the participants’ slow-wave sleep, also known as deep sleep, which improves attention, learning, memory and other cognitive tasks.
The researchers saw faster responses in all the cognitive tests with no loss in accuracy. This implies an increase in the processing speed of different brain regions, particularly the cortex and the hippocampus, the memory seat.
The researchers say yoga nidra probably improves sleep by reducing activity of the sympathetic nervous system, which drives the body’s ‘fight or flight’ response, and increasing activity of the parasympathetic nervous system, which calms the body and allows us to fall asleep.
Yoga nidra could potentially be used to help patients with mild learning disabilities or cognitive disorders, the researchers say.
