Best Free Yoga Nidra App

S Of A Yoga Nidra Practice

Some yoga studios offer yoga nidra, but you can also do it at home with the help of YouTube or a meditation app. You dont need fancy equipment either. You can lie flat on your back on a yoga mat or a blanket with a bolster or pillow supporting your lower back, spine and your head. You can even put a blanket or pillow under your knees.

Bar says there are 10 stages of a yoga nidra practice. These steps are outlined by Richard Miller in his 10 Stages of Yoga Nidra.

The First Goal Of The Preparation Is To Re

During our hectic modern lives we enjoy very cerebral pursuits

Its all too common for us to get up in our heads.

Swirling thoughts, anxiety and stress. This can be controlledand soothed by re-connecting with our bodies. Direct your awareness toyour body. Part by part.

Start with your neck and shoulders. How do they feel? Sensethe tension in your muscles and allow it to dissipate. You may besurprised at how much tension you are holding, without being aware!

Then move to your back and do the same thing. Next your face,your arms and your legs.

If you find this enjoyable, you may wish to extend it evenfurther with the 61 Point Relaxation Technique.

When you have finished scanning your body and are fully awareof it, its time to shine the light of our awareness inwards – to ouremotions and thoughts.

Yoga Nidra : Full Body Relaxation Benefits And Tips

• Yoga Nidra: The Takeaway

Stress and anxiety are issues that most of us deal with everyday on some level. Globally, about 284 million people experienced an anxiety disorder in 2017, making it the most prevalent mental health issue worldwide.

While we dont always have control over what happens in our lives, we can develop control over our responses. Controlling our responses to stressors goes a long way towards reducing how much stress and anxiety we feel. This is where yoga nidra comes into play.

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Best Budget: Insight Timer

Key Specs:

• Cost: Free access to thousands of meditations. Premium is about $60 per year or roughly $10 per month.
• App Features: Over 45,000 free meditations.

Why We Chose It: We chose Insight Timer because it has a giant library of free meditations which you can filter by what youre looking for.

• Easy to search and filter content

• Free seven day intro course

• Free community of meditators

• Not the most intuitive app

• Too many choices overwhelms some users

• Technical glitches

Insight Timer offers more than 45K free meditationsthats a big deal, as one of the biggest complaints about other apps is their lack of free content. The library allows you to filter by need , time , or specific benefit . If youre just getting started, opt for the seven-day free course on how to meditate. You can also join the community of fellow mindful folks for free.

Yoga Nidra: The Takeaway

Yoga nidra is one of the most impactful and ancient yogic styles. Having been practiced for over 1300 years, it has stood the test of time and made its way into our stressful modern lives.

A robust body of research has shown that yoga nidra brings numerous powerful benefits to your body, mind, and emotions.

Yoga nidra also happens to be one of the most accessible and low-impact yogic practices. This means you dont have to look great in yoga pants to receive its positive effects on stress, anxiety, depression, and associated physical problems.

Though alleviating these mental and physical issues is often what first draws people to yoga nidra, the spiritual experience of profoundly connecting with the deepest layers of oneself is what keeps people coming back.

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The 7 Best Meditation Apps Of 2021

Key Specs:

• Cost: Calm offers a seven-day free trial with annual membership for around $70. Or, if you want meditations for life, you can pay about $400 for indefinite access to the app.
• App Features: Calming background sounds and short meditations

Why We Chose It: We chose Calm because its a flexible app with less structured programs and exercises that help manage anxiety.

• App offers more individual exercises

• Less structured

• Need a subscription

• App isnt the most intuitive

What are you working through? Anxious thoughts? Lack of focus? A stressed-out psyche? Calms guided meditations have you covered. More than that, though, the app really focuses on teaching you a variety of tools and using different modalities to help you stay centered throughout the day-to-day.

Calm stands out from the crowd because of its well-being offerings beyond that of its already impressive meditation catalog. Their newest offering is Calm Body, which are 10-minute guided videos that teach gentle stretching to help you unwind. One of the best features is Sleep Stories, which feature bedtime stories read by the soothing voices of celebs .

Looking for more ideas? Take a peek at our roundup of the best meditation books.

Other Tips For Practicing Yoga Nidra

While yoga nidra might seem much easier than traditional yoga, Bar says you still have to practice, especially if youre not used to meditation or quieting your mind. She recommends practicing away from distractions and in a darker room. You can use a sleep mask to block out light if you need to. Bar also recommends covering up with a blanket since the body tends to cool down when its at rest.

If lying on the floor for a while wouldnt be comfortable for you, you can practice yoga nidra in a recliner or even in bed. And you dont have to start with a long session. Start with 15 or 20 minutes and work your way up. You also dont have to do yoga nidra in the middle of the day. A nighttime practice can help you sleep tight through most of the night.

And like with most things, dont give up if you struggle with your first session. Quieting your mind and not doing anything is much harder than you think. So give yoga nidra a few tries. Youll get the hang of it in no time especially when your mind and body need time to rest and recover.

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Script 2 Deep Relaxation

Your mind feels like the sky.

Each cloud is one of your thoughts or emotions. Take a momentto look up at your sky and see which of the themes in your life are upthere. Which are looming dark rain clouds and which are little whitepuffs skiting briskly across the sky.

Most beautiful of all is the bright, brilliant, beamingpatches of clear blue. You focus on these and feel the weight lift fromyour shoulders. You breathe deeply and feel yourself relax.

Slowly, all the clouds in the sky are one by one blown away bya brisk wind imbued with an enchanting energy.

You watch the clouds disappear over the horizon and as you do yourmind clears. You feel a great sense of relief and deeprelaxation.

Only blissful, clear, open blue is in your mind now.

Your mind seems now blank as a white piece of paper.

Good Yoga Nidra Language

So many yoga teachers are excellent in their field but fall down when it comes to proper use of relaxing language.

For example a teacher might say something like: ‘Let go of tension and stresses’. Now, the brain is an organ that needs clear positively framed instructions. So, for example, telling a child not to drop the tray of food is actually aligning the child’s mind to dropping the tray.

By using this language, the yoga teacher sets a negative template – asking the child to be careful with the tray of food is setting the right template. The brain needs clear, positively orientated instructions and this most certainly applies to language used during your Yoga Nidra practice.

There will be many hypnotic language patterns used in this session you’ll not be aware of but you’ll find it’s all positively phrased to make your experience much more powerful and positive.

This session will guide you through a wonderful Yoga Nidra session and, if you are a yoga teacher, you can download the Yoga Nidra script, and study the hypnotic language used for Yoga Nidra to improve your own yoga teaching.

Download Yoga Nidra now and use it after your yoga practice and when you just need to relax deeply. You can listen on your computer or device or via our free app which you can access when you have completed your purchase.

Yoga Nidra has been purchased by 504 customers.

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Some Of The Benefits Include:

Unfortunately, for many of us, we do not always experience the stage of deep sleep. Some people have undiagnosed sleep disorders or sleep disruptions, such as difficulty breathing. For others, lifestyle factors contribute to the prevention of deep sleep. These things include having too much caffeine throughout the day, excessive worry or stress, or sleeping in a room that is not entirely void of light or electronics.

Yoga Nidra is designed to help you enter the brainwave cycles that constitute deep sleep. When done correctly, the practice of Yoga Nidra can account for approximately one hour of deep sleep.

The final stage of Yoga Nidra also has restorative and regenerative properties, just like those experienced in non-REM sleep.

Piercy’s Meditation Is An Excellent Choice To Address Insomnia

As the caregiver to my elderly mom as well as mom to a teenager in the house who’s doing virtual school right now, I can tell you that I’ve used it more than a few times when I’ve desperately needed an hour’s rest in the afternoon and it works just as well to give me a refreshing nap with no “hangover” when I wake up as it does to provide a full night’s sleep.

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How Do You Lead Yoga Nidra

Keep in mind that the goal of this exercise is to be in a state of rest and effortlessness so that your body can experience profound healing and rejuvenation.

You can follow this script on your own and maybe record your own voice for some extra healing power. I like to use visualizations to guide the consciousness into a state of deep relaxation, but you certainly dont have to do it that way.

So the first thing you need to do is get really comfortable because were going to be lying here for quite a while. So what Im gonna suggest is that you use a bolster under your knees so that your low back doesnt hurt.

But if you dont have a bolster, you can just grab a pillow from your bed or couch cushions and just kinda put them under your knees. You dont have to do any of this, Im just showing you the setup that I like.

I like to be covered with a blanket. So Im gonna suggest you cover yourself with a blanket here. And then another nice touch is to have a cervical pillow underneath your neck.

So again, none of these things are required. Pretty much everyone has access to a blanket, so I definitely encourage at least doing that step so youre just warm and feel grounded.

And then this last step is an eye pillow that you can place over your eyes, this is something I really love to do and it makes the whole experience a lot more delicious.

Here we go

How Do You Practice Yoga Nidra

Want to get a feel for how a yoga nidra session goes? In a nutshell, youll want to lie down in a comfortable position. You may desire a blanket to keep you warm or a block under your knees for support. The goal is to make yourself as comfortable as possible because youll be in this position for at least 30 minutes.

First, you will set your Sankalpa for the practice. Think about a goal you want to achieve during the time youve set aside for yourself. Youll then be asked to scan your body and notice sensations. Youll become aware of your breath and the meditation will provide guided instruction as to how to breathe to drop deeper into your resting state.

Youll also embark upon guided visualizations of light. Its at this point that the magic starts to happen as you calmly sink into the four states of brain wave activity.

At the end of the practice, youll reflect on the journey youve taken with your yoga nidra guide. Bringing awareness back to present reality, youll restate your Sankalpa. Youll come into a seated position again to honor the space youve created, feeling deeply at peace.

Dont hesitate to give this relaxation technique a try. Enter your email below to download your yoga nidra audio file now.

Looking for another way to improve your mental and physical health? Learn how you can sleep better and manage stress with exercise.

This guided meditation will put you into a state of deep relaxation equal .

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References

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A 10 Step Guide To Deep Relaxation With Yoga Nidra Meditation

Heres a sample of what a Yoga Nidra session might look like. Thanks so much to our gaia.com expert Jill Miller for providing the template for this beginners guide. And remember that this is just one examplethere are many Yoga Nidra practices to choose from!

Yoga Nidra: Sacred Sleep

If youre the need of some TLC, Coren says theres nothing quite as relaxing or peaceful as Yoga Nidra. The instructor leads listeners through deep states of healing, ranging from 10 to 30 minutes. While sure, not exactly a rigorous workout, if youre battling falling asleep at night, she says its the ideal way to let go and catch some zs.

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Guided Meditations & Music On Android

This is a great app which gives you access to 6 x different guided meditation tracks and 1 x meditation music track. The guided meditations are various lengths, from 10 minute Go to sleep meditations to 60 minute Deep relaxation meditations. There is a great choice & bound to be something to suit everyone. All this material uses scientifically proven brainwave entrainment technology which is what makes them so powerful.

For more guided meditations and relaxing music for meditation by the same author, you can visit their e-shop . This is a great app with an awesome choice of guided meditations, something to suits everyones tastes.

The website associated with this application is this one: www.topguidedmeditations.com

Benefits Of Yoga Nidra

Bar says that yoga nidra works with the autonomic nervous system. The autonomic nervous system regulates processes of the body that take place without a conscious effort . This system also includes the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems.

Meditation helps us calm the sympathetic nervous system mainly, our fight-or-flight response, explains Bar. We do a meditation practice to basically calm the sympathetic, or fight-or-flight and activate the parasympathetic more. Theres such a benefit when those are balanced overall for immunity, digestion and stress management. But in this deeper relaxation, the pineal gland is activated and that releases the hormone melatonin.

Melatonin is a powerful antioxidant. It can also help manage immune function, blood pressure, cortisol levels and induce restful sleep.

A recent study showed that while meditation and yoga nidra were both effective in reducing anxiety and stress, yoga nidra seemed to be more effective in reducing anxiety. The study also suggested that yoga nidra can be a useful tool in reducing both cognitive and physiological symptoms of anxiety.

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