Yoga Nidra for Trauma Healing + Recovery

Yoga Nidra helps calm the nervous system, release tension, and promote emotional safety. Combined with Sankalpa, a powerful intention, it aids in trauma recovery and improves sleep for lasting change.

Yoga Nidra, often referred to as “yogic sleep,” is an incredible practice that goes beyond physical relaxation. This technique comes from the tantras, used to learn how to relax consciously, reaching a state of dynamic sleep.

Yoga Nidra is a systematic method of inducing complete physical, mental, and emotional relaxation. The term yoga nidra is derived from two Sanskrit words, yoga meaning union or one-pointed awareness, and nidra which means sleep.

During the practice of Yoga Nidra, one appears to be asleep, but consciousness functions at a deeper level of awareness. In this threshold state between sleep and wakefulness, contact with the subconscious and unconscious dimensions occurs spontaneously.

There are three fundamental and distinct states of individual human consciousness: waking, dreaming, and deep sleep. Each of these states and the borderline state of yoga nidra has been correlated with distinct patterns of electrical activity in the brain.

During the practice of Yoga Nidra, periodic bursts of alpha waves are interspersed between alternating periods of beta and theta predominance. This means that the consciousness is poised on the borderline between wakefulness and sleep for an extended period, fluctuating cyclically between extroversion and introversion.

Yoga Nidra with Sankalpa

Sankalpa is a positive, transformative affirmation that you create and repeat during Yoga Nidra. This resolve is planted deep in the unconscious mind, where it has the potential to bring about lasting change.

By setting an intention aligned with healing or finding a purpose, you direct the mind to focus on growth, helping to rewire negative patterns formed by trauma. Trauma often leaves people feeling powerless. Yoga Nidra encourages a focus on bodily sensations and breath, which can create a feeling of safety and control. The repetition of a personal intention (sankalpa) can also help trauma survivors feel empowered to heal.

How Yoga Nidra Helps with Trauma

Stress induced by trauma: Trauma often leads to dysregulation of the nervous system, leaving people in a state of hypervigilance (fight-or-flight) or shutdown (freeze response). Yoga Nidra promotes relaxation by activating the parasympathetic nervous system (rest and digest), helping the body shift away from stress.
Physical stress: The body scan and guided awareness techniques in Yoga Nidra help release tension stored in different parts of the body. This can be especially helpful for trauma survivors who often carry emotional or physical stress unconsciously.
Safe space for trauma healing: Yoga Nidra provides a safe space to explore difficult emotions without becoming overwhelmed. The practice creates a sense of detachment or distance, allowing practitioners to observe emotions and thoughts without re-experiencing the trauma.
Insomnia: Trauma survivors often experience hyperarousal, where the mind is constantly on high alert. Yoga Nidra helps calm the mind by shifting brainwaves into slower states (theta and delta waves), which are associated with deep rest and healing.
Many trauma survivors struggle with sleep disturbances like insomnia, nightmares, or poor-quality rest. Yoga Nidra helps improve sleep by promoting deep relaxation, which can be restorative for people dealing with trauma-related sleep issues.

Swami Satyananda Saraswati on Yoga Nidra

Most people sleep without resolving their tensions,
This is termed nidra.
Nidra means sleep, no matter what or why,
But yoga nidra means sleep after throwing off the burdens, It is of a blissful, higher quality altogether.

When awareness is separate and distinct from the vrittis, When waking, dreaming and deep sleep pass like clouds, Yet awareness of atma remains
This is the experience of total relaxation.

Relaxation does not mean sleep. Relaxation means to be blissfully happy,
It has no end.
I call bliss absolute relaxation;
Sleep is a different matter.
Sleep gives only the mind and sense of relaxation. Bliss relaxes the atma, the inner self;
That is why, in tantra,
Yoga Nidra is the doorway to samadhi.