A pilot study that was conducted by Karuna Datta of the Armed Forces Medical College in India and colleagues and published on December 13 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE suggests that the practice of yoga nidra, which is a form of mindfulness training, has the potential to improve sleep, cognition, learning, and memory, even in individuals just beginning their yoga practice. Following an intervention that lasted two weeks with a group of beginner practitioners, the researchers discovered that the percentage of delta waves during deep sleep rose and that all assessed cognitive functions improved.
People lie down and are guided into conscious relaxation through yoga nidra. This contrasts with more active versions of yoga, which concentrate on physical postures, breathing, and muscular control. However, such results were based more on subjective assessments than on objective data, even though it has been shown to boost your ability to sleep and your cognitive abilities. A battery of cognitive tests and objective polysomnographic measurements of sleep were utilised in the new investigation. After practising yoga nidra for two weeks, measurements were obtained before and after the practice. The measurements were collected during the daytime using a twenty-minute audio recording.
Polysomnography aims to identify the duration of each stage of sleep and the frequency with which each stage occurs by measuring the brain’s activity. The participants in the study showed a significantly increased percentage of delta waves in deep sleep and an increased sleep efficiency after two weeks of practising yoga nidra, according to the researchers’ findings. In addition, they saw faster responses in all cognitive tests, with no loss in accuracy, and faster and more correct responses in activities, such as tests of working memory, abstraction, fear and anger detection, and spatial learning and memory tasks. The findings provide credence to earlier research that established a connection between delta-wave sleep and enhanced sleep quality, as well as enhanced attention and memory.
The study’s authors think their research provides objective proof that yoga nidra significantly improves both sleep quality and cognitive performance. With its low cost and easy accessibility, yoga nidra is an exercise that could potentially benefit many people.
According to the authors, practising yoga nidra facilitates better sleep and speeds up information processing in the brain. There was also an increase in accuracy, particularly with tasks connected to learning and memory.
