Researchers led by Karuna Datta of the Armed Forces Medical College in India found that even in beginners, practicing yoga nidra, a type of mindfulness training, may enhance sleep, cognition, learning, and memory. The researchers observed that all assessed cognitive capacities improved and that the percentage of delta waves in deep sleep increased following a two-week intervention with a group of inexperienced practitioners.
Yoga nidra leads practitioners into a conscious state of relaxation while they are in a laying position, in contrast to more vigorous types of yoga that concentrate on physical postures, breathing, and muscular control. Although reports of improved sleep and cognitive function have been made, these reports have relied on subjective measurements rather than empirical evidence.
A series of cognitive assessments and objective polysomnographic sleep measures were employed in the new study. A 20-minute audio recording was used to conduct yoga nidra practice during the day, and measurements were recorded both before and after the two-week period.
Yoga Nidra Enhanced Attention and Memory
Polysomnography monitors brain activity, among other things, to ascertain the duration and frequency of each stage of sleep. The subjects showed a markedly higher percentage of delta waves in deep sleep and dramatically improved sleep efficiency after two weeks of yoga nidra, according to the researchers.
Additionally, they saw faster responses with no loss of accuracy in all cognitive assessments as well as faster and more correct responses in working memory, abstraction, fear and anger detection, and spatial learning and memory tasks. The results corroborate earlier research linking delta-wave sleep to enhanced attention and memory in addition to greater sleep quality.
Yoga nidra is a simple form of pratyahara, or the withdrawal of senses, and it’s easy to perform. It’s been called “awake aware sleep,” which sets it apart from hypnosis and meditation.
When novices practiced yoga nidra, they observed higher power spectra density in the delta frequency band at various points during the exercise, such as local sleep, while the subject epochs were recording wake state. This distinguishes yoga nidra from meditation, which has alpha-theta state benefits, since yoga nidra practices display a delta inclination.
Useful Tool
The authors think this research offers unbiased proof that yoga nidra is a useful tool for raising both the quality of sleep and cognitive function. Yoga nidra is an inexpensive and easily obtainable practice that may be helpful to a large number of individuals.
Its use has been linked to stress reduction, and its role in the management of insomnia, menstrual irregularities, post-traumatic stress disorder, and improved sleep and performance in athletes has also been documented.
In the study, the pre-recorded yoga nidra audio session in the above video was used. The practice consisted of seven steps, namely: preparation, samkalpa (resolution), body part awareness, breath awareness, feeling and sensation, visualization, and ending of practice.
Study participants kept a sleep diary for 14 days. The sleep diary was filled twice a day, once in the morning just after getting up and again at night just before bedtime.
“Yoga nidra practice improves sleep and makes brain processing faster. Accuracy also increased, especially with learning and memory related tasks,”
the authors concluded.
Abstract
Complementary and Alternative medicine is known to have health benefits. Yoga nidra practice is an easy-to-do practice and has shown beneficial effects on stress reduction and is found to improve sleep in insomnia patients. Effect of yoga nidra practice on subjective sleep is known but its effect on sleep and cognition objectively is not documented. The aim of the study was to study the effect of yoga nidra practice on cognition and sleep using objective parameters. 41 participants were enrolled, and baseline sleep diary (SD) collected. Participants volunteered for overnight polysomnography (PSG) and cognition testing battery (CTB) comprising of Motor praxis test, emotion recognition task (ERT), digital symbol substitution task, visual object learning task (VOLT), abstract matching (AIM), line orientation task, matrix reasoning task, fractal-2-back test (NBACK), psychomotor vigilance task and balloon analog risk task. Baseline CTB and after one and two weeks of practice was compared. Power spectra density for EEG at central, frontal, and occipital locations during CTB was compared. Repeat SD and PSG after four weeks of practice were done. After yoga nidra practice, improved reaction times for all cognition tasks were seen. Post intervention compared to baseline (95%CI; p-value, effect size) showed a significant improvement in sleep efficiency of +3.62% (0.3, 5.15; p = 0.03, r = 0.42), -20min (-35.78, -5.02; p = 0.003, d = 0.84) for wake after sleep onset and +4.19 μV2 (0.5, 9.5; p = 0.04, r = 0.43) in delta during deep sleep. Accuracy increased in VOLT (95% CI: 0.08, 0.17; p = 0.002, d = 0.79), AIM (95% CI: 0.03, 0.12; p = 0.02, d = 0.61) and NBACK (95% CI: 0.02, 0.13; p = 0.04, d = 0.56); ERT accuracy increased for happy, fear and anger (95% CI: 0.07, 0.24; p = 0.004, d = 0.75) but reduced for neutral stimuli (95% CI: -0.31, -0.12; p = 0.04, r = 0.33) after yoga nidra practice. Yoga Nidra practice improved cognitive processing and night-time sleep.
Reference:
- Datta K, Bhutambare A, V. L. M, Narawa Y, Srinath R, Kanitkar M (2023) Improved sleep, cognitive processing and enhanced learning and memory task accuracy with Yoga nidra practice in novices. PLoS ONE 18(12): e0294678.