Readers of this blog will know that I am a big fan of yoga nidra – a guided relaxation practice that has roots in yoga philosophy and western psychology. So I was really intrigued when I came across NSDR (non-sleep deep rest), and even more so when it was introduced as a practice that is distinct from yoga nidra. I was even more intrigued in the past few days when I saw NSDR be introduced in a (non-peer-reviewed) scientific paper as a form of yoga nidra that has further popularised the practice recently.
So, are they different?
What is yoga nidra?
Yoga nidra is a guided relaxation practice that is sometimes also referred to as yogic sleep. The practice typically involves a rotation of awareness through the body, a breathing exercise and visualisations, although the exact content and structure will vary depending on the school of yoga nidra and the teacher.
It can lead to altered states of consciousness, as demonstrated by the few neuroscience studies that exist, but at the very least most people report feeling deeply relaxed, which probably explains some of yoga nidra’s health benefits. These include:
- Improvements on sleep
- Benefits on mental health and wellbeing (see here and here)
- Some weak evidence on improvements in pain
- And more weak evidence on hormonal improvements in women
As I’ve written about yoga nidra quite a lot before, I’ll leave it there, but if you are new to the practice, hopefully you get the idea (also, if you are new to the practice, here’s one I recorded in 2022).
What is NSDR?
NSDR was introduced by Andrew Huberman in 2022 as a practice that helps improve sleep; a sort of power nap that can help you feel deeply relaxed. It uses a combination of rotation of awareness through the body and breathing exercises (with maybe some visualisation) to help to achieve this.
Right… That sounds … the same?
If you are confused, so was I. Especially because, when the practice was introduced on social media, the only obvious distinction was that NSDR involves no setting of intention. Which, I challenged (but got no response to) as I don’t personally include intention setting when I lead a yoga nidra practice.
Likewise, the Yoga Journal article I found on this topic had even more odd reasons that the two practices are distinct, including that yoga nidra may include Om chanting at the start (I’ve literally never attended a yoga nidra session that included chanting, and it wasn’t part of either teacher training I did).
It probably doesn’t help that there are many schools of yoga nidra. Sure, NSDR seems different to a Bihar-style yoga nidra (with its intention setting, strict rotation of awareness and crazy imagery), but many teachers (myself included) take inspiration from a mixture of schools when writing scripts.
It’s a difference in branding
In very crude terms, branding is a way to package something up and make it appealing to a specific audience.
The ‘yoga’ part of yoga nidra gives it spiritual and ancient connotations. People sometimes claim it has ancient origins (not true, it’s a fairly modern practice), and use lots of yoga jargon like koshas when talking about the practice itself.
NSDR, by contrast, is presented not as a practice, but as a ‘protocol’ or a behavioural tool. It has a nice scientific acronym, and is peppered with scientific insights (interesting, by the way, that I can’t find any actual research on NSDR so I’m assuming that said evidence is on yoga nidra and or mindfulness body scanning). The free recording I tried was delivered in a calm but matter-of-fact voice, with no new age language, imagery or music.
Some people will be drawn to spirituality and will want the ‘ancient’ yoga nidra practice, whereas this might put others off, who might prefer an ‘evidence-based’ health hack instead. In some ways, it serves a purpose – you know what kind of yoga nidra you are going to get (and thus can avoid having to switch off a nidra because the teacher started to sing half-way through… just me?).
Since starting on this rabbit hole I came across this article, which linked me to this interview, where Huberman seems to admit that this is exactly what he tried to do by re-branding yoga nidra.
It’s worth noting that iRest, a practice developed by Richard Miller, is branded as contemporary version of yoga nidra with psychology underpinnings (and a lot of the research on yoga nidra has been done with the iRest style). But it’s still called yoga nidra.
There’s also the can of worms that is the mindfulness body scan, which is another very similar practice, but let’s leave that for now.
So, while I am rather annoyed by the selling of NSDR as a novel practice (ahem, if you couldn’t tell already from this blog post), if it does mean that more people get to experience the benefits of yoga nidra, that’s a good thing.
If you want to try out NSDR, here’s a free recording on youtube. And then for laughs, try one of the non-Huberman ones immediately after (eg this one) and try and work out how it’s any different to a yoga nidra.
Have you tried NSDR? Does it feel like a different practice to yoga nidra to you?
GEEKY YOGA 
I’m only familiar with yoga nidra. But sounds that the-many-letters protocol is about same same. And I’ve heard Huberman tell (in some pod) that he ”is a great fan of yoga nidra and the-letters”
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