For this post, I’ve invited guest writer Ivan Phillips, to share some of his wisdom about Yoga Nidra, and to share his thoughts on the tendency for science to reject interventions that have an aspect of “spiritualism” in their practices. Well worth the read, thanks Ivan!
Yoga Nidra: Bringing Yogic Sleep to the Masses
Are long shifts and unpredictable scheduling making your meditation practice inconsistent? Recent popularity has pushed Yoga Nidra into the mainstream as an alternative to more traditional meditation options, able to be practiced in less than 20 minutes. If you enjoy short meditation sessions, this practice is the tool of choice for biohackers like Google CEO Sundar Pichai. But is western rebranding helpful, or harmful?
Yoga Nidra Origins
For those unfamiliar, Yoga Nidra is a multi-stage guided meditation practice inspired by Vedic texts, but developed in the 1970’s as a modern technique with the goal of facilitating deep relaxation. There is variability among practitioners, although it is generally agreed upon that mantras should be used in the early stages.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6134749/
Yoga Nidra was among the first meditation practices to be taken seriously by academics and even the most stalwart western skeptics. By 2005, Yoga Nidra was widely accepted in clinical settings, most notably appearing in the iRest protocol for treatment of PTSD in war veterans.
Yoga Nidra: Research Insights
The body of evidence supporting yoga nidra as a fundamental mental health intervention is robust, with further proliferation of studies over the past five years. For the sake of readability, I will resist the urge to turn this article into a full blown research analysis, but documented benefits of Yoga Nidra include improvements in PTSD, anxiety, depression, stress, sleep, self-esteem and chronic pain. In laboratory conditions, experienced practitioners have demonstrated their ability to enter REM sleep cycles while awake and talking. Very cool stuff!
Spiritualism in academia
Recent accolades from public figures have established Yoga Nidra as one of the most revolutionary tools available for non-pharmacologic total life optimization, but the public interest has revealed something unfortunate that is worth discussing.
When presented with irrefutable evidence detailing the benefits of mindfulness, the first reaction of many people, especially academics and medical professionals, is to reject any pretense of spiritualism. Considering that Yoga Nidra, developed in the 20th century, is already once removed from ancient dogma, it seems incredibly unproductive to undermine the value of this practice by debating the finer details. And yet, it’s time the discussion is had.
Recently, Stanford researcher and medical podcaster Dr. Andrew Huberman has pushed for a mindfulness protocol called “Non-Sleep Deep Rest” (NSDR), which he characterizes as Yoga Nidra without mantras, safe from the ickiness of anything interpreted as being “woo.” To me, it seems incredibly revealing that one of the brightest medical minds in the world is willing to change the protocol that has been studied extensively for decades, just to remove a slight flavor of spiritualism — isn’t doing this a tremendous risk to patients? There is a funny saying that I heard often while growing up in the South that applies here: “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
What is the benefit of spiritual rejectionism?
I am not without bias on this topic, I must admit. It would be tough to back up the claim in statistical terms, but I do feel that there is a great need for spiritual fulfillment in America. Could we explore the public health ramifications of this problem? Should we?
Doing so would be uncomfortable, that much is certain.
When interventions like Yoga Nidra are discovered, they are first pushed through an academic filter which has remained largely unchanged since the creation of higher education centuries ago. Although the filter is built to protect us from farce and, in the case of NSDR, to maximize the number of people who are receptive to a new treatment, it’s time we reconsidered whether all these components are serving our highest goals.
Currently, any element of spiritualism is considered unacceptable, untestable, and irrelevant to researchers. Much like the schedulization of cannabis delayed medical research for a generation, spiritual rejectionism has a chilling effect on meditation acceptance at a time when interventions like Yoga Nidra are needed more than ever.
With time and repetitions, research will tell us whether it is possible to excise the spiritual components of meditation and still see the same benefits, but knee-jerk resistance to concepts that have guided meditation practices for millennia is unacceptable, especially when an effective process has already been established.
If you need me, I’ll be doing Yoga Nidra on my lunch break. And, if I have the time, I might even get a little “woo.”
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