What is Yoga Nidra?
You might have seen it online, or heard about it before. Yoga Nidra is very popular.
Yoga Nidra, or yogic sleep, is a guided relaxation practice.
It is a very ancient practice, and in research it is sometimes described as “non-sleep deep rest”: you are not asleep, but you are not simply awake either.
Yoga Nidra is a form of guided meditation that allows you to experience a state similar to deep rest, while remaining aware.
Yoga Nidra is a profound relaxation practice that helps quiet the nervous system and create space for whatever is present, without needing to fix it.
Yoga Nidra offers a direct experience of stillness: not by escaping your day, but by returning, again and again, to yourself.
Yoga Nidra is a practice in total conscious relaxation. This state is reached by gradually shifting your awareness away from the outer world, through the body, the breath and the senses.
What research says about the benefits of Yoga Nidra
The largest review to date (Ghai et al., 2026, published in Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, based on 73 studies and 5,201 participants) found a clear reduction in stress, anxiety and low mood among people who practiced Yoga Nidra regularly. The researchers themselves note that the quality of the underlying studies varies, and that the true effect may be somewhat smaller than these numbers suggest, but the overall direction is clear.
Other studies point to more specific effects:
- A short, daily practice (as little as 11 minutes) can lower your cortisol level and make your daily cortisol rhythm healthier.
- In people with chronic insomnia, Yoga Nidra improved sleep efficiency and total sleep time, comparable to cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia (CBT-I).
- Yoga Nidra measurably increases heart rate variability (HRV), a sign that your parasympathetic nervous system, the part responsible for rest and repair, becomes more active.
- Yoga Nidra reduces pain compared to doing nothing, although it is not yet clear whether it works better than other forms of active rest.
You can read all of this in more depth, including links to the original studies, in our Yoga Nidra knowledge database.
What Yoga Nidra is not
We want to be honest here: Yoga Nidra is not a substitute for sleep, and it does not replace professional treatment for anxiety or depression. You may have heard the claim that one hour of Yoga Nidra equals several hours of sleep. That specific equivalence has never been scientifically demonstrated, even though the deep, restorative state itself is real and has been measured with EEG research.
Yoga Nidra within the InnerPower Method
Within the InnerPower Method, developed by Ilse-Marie Sobering, Yoga Nidra is approached through three simple movements: LAND, BREATHE, FEEL.
LAND — you arrive. You feel the floor, the mat, the bed beneath you.
BREATHE — you change nothing about your breath, you simply notice it.
FEEL — you look at what is there: restlessness, tiredness, or nothing in particular. You don’t need to get rid of it.
And then it begins again. You don’t arrive home in yourself once and stay there, you leave and you return, again and again.
Interested in learning to guide Yoga Nidra yourself?
Ilse-Marie Sobering teaches Yoga Nidra teacher trainings through House of InnerPower. Explore the knowledge database, or get in touch to hear about current training options.
Ilse-Marie Sobering is the founder of House of InnerPower and the creator of the InnerPower Method: LAND • ADEM • VOEL (Land, Breathe, Feel), a cyclical practice of returning to yourself again and again. She has studied yoga philosophy and Eastern philosophy for more than 25 years, and has worked professionally since 2015 as an E-RYT 500 yoga and Yoga Nidra teacher, mindfulness and breathwork coach, Ayurveda practitioner and EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques) practitioner. In Spain, where she lived for seven years, she taught trainings, teacher trainings and retreats at various locations in the Málaga region, including near Periana, Nerja and Frigiliana. She now works from the Netherlands, teaching trainings and speaking in the Netherlands, in Spain and online. Within the method she works with Yin Yoga, Yoga Nidra, breathwork, meditation, Qigong and somatic work, complemented with elements from her hypnotherapy training. She teaches teacher trainings, continuing education and company training, for people living with long-term stress and for professionals who want to deepen the way they guide others.
