It might sound like a weird thing to do, but reading people’s conversations online is a fantastic research tool to gather insights into people’s behaviours, beliefs and attitudes. This is what we call ‘social listening’, which is basically a polite name for social snooping (to public data, obviously).
A few years ago I did a social listening exercise to discover what people think of yoga nidra; what they think it is, why they decide to try it and the benefits they have experienced. You can read all about this here if you haven’t already. I mainly did it because I’m nosy and had some spare time in my hands, but ultimately I think it was helpful for shaping the practices I prepare – my findings even made it to an advanced yoga nidra teacher training. After all, a business’ success depends on it understanding its target market and tailoring its content towards it (and by that I mean using what people look for from a yoga nidra to shape how you advertise your sessions and courses).
I thought it would be interesting to repeat this exercise to see if things have changed, and also validate my earlier findings. So here we go.
Sleep & wellbeing are the key reasons why people seek out yoga nidra
By far the most posts by people intrigued by yoga nidra related to a desire to use it to either help with insomnia (or other sleep disorders) or with getting better sleep more broadly. Tied to this was a desire to find out more information about the potential of yoga nidra to help with anxiety and help to improve mental wellbeing.
So, from a marketing perspective, if you were positioning your yoga nidra practices as a tool for either of the above, you are spot on. Of course the usual yoga nidra myth of it equating to X hours of sleep still popped up, but we’ll ignore that and I won’t be repeating it here to reinforce it. Please please don’t use it to advertise your work (not unless you can find some actual evidence for it, which I haven’t been able to).
But, here’s a surprise…
The other thing you could do is sell your sessions or courses as a way to aid with astral projection, because apparently that’s the second biggest reason people seek out yoga nidra after sleep support. No, I am actually serious. Astral projection, the practice of leaving your physical body while being awake, is one of the key goals of yoga nidra practitioners.
am intrested in using yoga nidra to astral project. I already can easily relax my body to the point where it sleeps but I can’t relax my mind or distract it to get near sleep so am always restless. My main 2 problems are I want to relax or distract my mind to make it wonder(meditation doesn’t work for me) and second thing am intrested in what moving my awearness throught the body does?
I should add a small caveat here. There is a apparently a whole astral projection subreddit on reddit, so that explains that. But still. Astral projection. Why not?
Improved sleep and mental wellbeing are also the biggest benefits reported
People use yoga nidra to improve their sleep in different ways; some like to fall asleep by playing a yoga nidra, others practice during the day to help them sleep better at night. Someone even reported practicing yoga nidra during the day to cope with tiredness caused by insomnia.
I’m practicing ‘Yoga Nidra’ for 30 minutes daily before I really fall asleep, it feels so good after I wake up. No much dreams, 6 – 7 hours of sleep and it feels sufficient. The overall sleep quality has enhanced.
Reduced stress and anxiety may also account for the reduction in pain for one person with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS; which has a known link to stress and anxiety).
When I am feeling lots of uncomfortable stomach pains, I do one of these 20 or 30 minute sessions and it basically eliminates it. Unfortunately the pain does usually come back afterwards, but it gives a nice break and reinforces that the discomfort I experience is primarily anxiety driven.
Improved focus, attention span & productivity
Of particular interest I thought was the repeated mention of experienced improved focus, attention span and productivity due to yoga nidra. I am not doubting that this is possible, but this does feel like a departure from the usual yoga nidra narrative (and didn’t come up in my 2020 version of the research). I wonder how influential Andrew Huberman is in this context as he specifically mentions improved productivity on his NSDR website (and presumably on his relevant podcast episodes and other promotional materials).
I don’t know how I feel about promoting a practice for improved productivity if I’m honest. But I do appreciate that in our full-of-distractions world a desire for improved focus and attention span (which is inevitably linked to productivity) could be a worthy pull for a yoga nidra offering.
But is this really meditation?
There were far fewer misconceptions about what yoga nidra is since 2020, which might be related to the quality of the data or mean a shift in popularity for the practice. In fact, the bulk of the reddit posts and a big number of the responses to questions were by yoga teachers promoting their offerings (I did not analyse those).
But one of the big questions that came up (and not one I have ever been asked before) is whether yoga nidra is enough meditation. I do remember us discussing whether it’s meditation or relaxation on my teacher training, and personally I always introduce it as meditation because I don’t see why it’s different from other kinds of (highly) guided meditations. I imagine that this is more of a question for those who have a long daily meditation practice, which a long-ish yoga nidra would take time away from.
Interested to hear your thoughts on this!
Methodology
I collected posts from the past 12 months from Reddit and Mumsnet by putting in the search term “yoga nidra” and collating responses. I only analysed posts that were non-promotional (which is indicative of some sort of conversation/discussion). The bulk of the Reddit posts were from the sub-Reddits Yoga Nidra, Meditation and Astral Projection.
I analysed 28 conversations (ie the original post and relevant responses) from Reddit and 3 from Mumsnet using thematic analysis – note that this is far fewer that what I picked up last time, and I think it’s partly because sooooo many of the Reddit posts were promotional this time so I excluded them. Tags related to:
- reasons to practice
- benefits
- questions & concerns
Limitations
This is obviously a tiny little analysis that I did for fun. It’s just a small indication of what people think, and by no means thorough. Use it with caution!
GEEKY YOGA 