- 💛 A Letter First
- 🌱 The Seed Verses
- 🪷 The Practice
- 🛌 What Yoga Nidrā Is
- 🌗 The Four States
- 🗂️ Every Kind of Yoga Nidrā
- 🪜 The Stages of the Practice
- 🧠 What Science Has Measured
- 🔗 How the Gaze Realises It
- 🧅 Five Bodies at Rest
- 🤝 Companions of the Practice
- 🌏 Other Paths & Views
- 📖 Stories & Allegories
- ❓ Misconceptions
- 📜 More Verses
- 🗂️ Sources & Notes
- 🙏 A Closing Blessing
💛 A Letter Before We Begin from my heart to yours
My dear friend, perhaps you know this hour. 🌗
You lie down on the mat at the end of a yoga class, or with a recording in your ears at home. A calm voice tells you to feel your right thumb, your second finger, your third. You follow for a little while. It is very pleasant. And the next thing you know, the voice is saying, "become aware of the room around you," and twenty minutes have gone, and you have no idea where.
You slept. Nearly everyone does. The teacher says kindly that the practice works anyway, and perhaps it does you good, as a nap does good. But you have a suspicion that something was meant to happen which did not: that you were supposed to be there for it.
Or you are one of the others: those who lie down to relax and find that the stillness lets every worry in, so that the body lies like a log and the mind runs like a mill.
This is the pain I want to speak to: people who are tired to the bone, and can neither truly rest nor stay awake inside their rest.
The old texts describe a state they call yoga-nidrā, the sleep of yoga, in which the body is as still as in deep sleep, the senses have withdrawn, and awareness is completely awake. They say it restores as nothing else does, and that it is the doorway to what lies beyond waking, dream and sleep. And they say something that is almost never repeated in a modern class: that the Goddess of this sleep has made her home in the eyes.
I am a Trataki. For hours every day I rest my gaze on one point, in the gentle way I describe at Trāṭaka Yoga. On this page I want to show you what Yoga Nidrā has meant over two thousand years, every form in which it is taught today, what science has found, and why I say that it is truly realised by the gaze. I will keep three things apart as I go: what the texts say, what has been measured, and what is my own experience. 💛
🌱 The Seed Verses the Lord, a hymn to the Goddess, two yogis and a commentator, on the sleep that is not sleep
यस्यां जाग्रति भूतानि सा निशा पश्यतो मुनेः ॥yā niśā sarva-bhūtānāṃ tasyāṃ jāgarti saṃyamī |
yasyāṃ jāgrati bhūtāni sā niśā paśyato muneḥ ||What is night for all beings,
In that the self-controlled one is awake.
That in which beings are awake
Is night for the sage who sees.
This is the oldest and deepest statement of Yoga Nidrā, though the word does not occur in it. There is something to which all beings are asleep: and the yogi is awake in it. Tasyāṃ jāgarti: "in that, he wakes". And the bustle to which the world is so wide awake is, to him, a kind of night.
Note the last two words: paśyato muneḥ, "of the sage who sees". The one awake in the night is called the seer.
विबोधनार्थाय हरेर्हरिनेत्रकृतालयाम् ॥tuṣṭāva yoga-nidrāṃ tām ekāgra-hṛdaya-sthitaḥ |
vibodhanārthāya harer hari-netra-kṛtālayām ||With a one-pointed heart he praised
That Yoga-nidrā,
In order to awaken Hari:
Her who has made her dwelling in the eyes of Hari.
At the end of an age Lord Viṣṇu lies upon the serpent Śeṣa on the waters, in yoga-nidrā. Two demons threaten Brahmā, who cannot wake the Lord, and so he prays to the sleep herself, the Goddess Yoganidrā. And the hymn gives her address: hari-netra-kṛtālayā, "she who has made her home in Hari's eyes". When she is pleased, the text says, she comes forth from his eyes, his mouth, his nostrils, his arms and his heart, and he wakes.
Two things I ask you to keep. Brahmā's state as he prays is ekāgra, one-pointed. And the seat of Yoga Nidrā, in the oldest hymn addressed to her, is the eye.
निःश्वासोच्छ्वासहीनश्च निश्चितं मुक्त एव सः ॥svastho jāgrad-avasthāyāṃ suptavad yo 'vatiṣṭhate |
niḥśvāsocchvāsa-hīnaś ca niścitaṃ mukta eva saḥ ||One who, at ease, remains in the waking state
As though asleep,
With no breathing out or in:
That one is certainly free.
The Haṭha definition, in four words: jāgrad-avasthāyāṃ suptavat, "in the waking state, as if asleep". Not asleep and dreaming of being awake. Awake, and as still as sleep, the breath so fine that it seems to have stopped. This is the sense in which the classical yogis use the word.
निरन्तराभ्यासनितान्तभद्रा सा जृम्भते योगिनि योगनिद्रा ॥
विश्रान्तिमासाद्य तुरीयतल्पे विश्वाद्यवस्थात्रितयोपरिस्थे ।
संविन्मयीं कामपि सर्वकालं निद्रां सखे निर्विश निर्विकल्पाम् ॥vicchinna-saṅkalpa-vikalpa-mūle niḥśeṣa-nirmūlita-karma-jāle |
nirantarābhyāsa-nitānta-bhadrā sā jṛmbhate yogini yoga-nidrā ||
viśrāntim āsādya turīya-talpe viśvādy-avasthā-tritayopari-sthe |
saṃvin-mayīṃ kām api sarva-kālaṃ nidrāṃ sakhe nirviśa nirvikalpām ||When the root of intention and imagining is cut, and the net of karma torn out entire,
Then, made most gracious by unbroken practice, that Yoga-nidrā unfolds in the yogi.
Having found rest on the bed of the Fourth, which lies above the three states beginning with waking,
Enter, friend, for all time, that sleep which is made of awareness, and free of all imagining.
Here the word itself, in a poem on yoga. This sleep comes when saṅkalpa and vikalpa, the mind's intending and imagining, are cut at the root. Its bed is turīya, the Fourth, above waking, dream and deep sleep. And it is saṃvin-mayī: "made of awareness". A sleep made of awareness is the opposite of what happens on most yoga mats.
Notice also what it is "made gracious by": nirantara-abhyāsa, unbroken practice. It is not produced by lying down. It is the fruit of a steadied mind.
सावस्था मनसा गम्या परा देवी प्रकाशते ॥anāgatāyāṃ nidrāyāṃ praṇaṣṭe bāhya-gocare |
sāvasthā manasā gamyā parā devī prakāśate ||When sleep has not yet come,
And the outer field has vanished,
That state is to be reached by the mind:
There the supreme Goddess shines.
The most exact instruction I know. Two conditions. Anāgatāyāṃ nidrāyām: sleep has not yet arrived. Praṇaṣṭe bāhya-gocare: the outer field of the senses has disappeared. Between those two, on the narrow sill where the world is gone and sleep has not come, there is a state; and Śiva says to the Goddess that she herself shines there.
All the forms of Yoga Nidrā, old and new, are attempts to stand on that sill. The whole difficulty is that it is narrow, and that we approach it lying down, in the dark, with our eyes shut.
And here is why we fall off the sill. The old commentator states it as a plain fact of the body: shut the eyes completely and the mind dissolves into sleep. Open them and it goes out to the world. The outer field must vanish, says the Vijñāna Bhairava; sleep must not come. Śrīdhara tells us what position of the eyes allows both at once: half-closed.
🪷 The Practice how Trāṭaka Yoga stands to the Yoga Nidrā you may already know
The method itself lives on one page only: Trāṭaka Yoga. It has three elements: a single point, half-open eyes, and a gentle gaze. I do not repeat the instructions here. I only say how it serves the one who seeks the yogi's rest. 🪷
🌗 Three ways to use Trāṭaka Yoga for Yoga Nidrā
As Yoga Nidrā itself, from the waking side. 👁️ Learn the practice at Trāṭaka Yoga. Sit, or recline with support as that page allows, and let the gaze rest. As it settles, the body grows still, the breath becomes fine, and the outer field fades from interest while you remain awake. That is the sill the verse describes, reached with the eyes half-open.
Before a guided Yoga Nidrā. 🛌 If you love the lying-down practice, keep it. Sit with the gaze first, until the eyes are quiet and the breath has evened. Then lie down and begin. You will find that you can follow the voice to the end, because you have brought wakefulness with you.
Before sleep itself. 🌙 The same sitting in the evening lets the senses turn back before you lie down, so that sleep, when you allow it, comes quickly and goes deep. I have written of this in Trāṭaka Yoga & Deep Sleep.
That is all. Rest that does not lose you. 💛
🧭 Is it sleep, or meditation?
Neither word quite fits, which is why the tradition made a third. The body is given what sleep gives. The mind is given what meditation gives. If you find you have slept, you needed sleep, and there is no fault in it. Only do not call it by the other name.
🌡️ How to tell it is right
You rise more awake than you sat down, the limbs heavy and pleasant, the breath quiet, the eyes cool. Time has passed without gaps: you can say what happened in it. Grogginess afterwards means sleep, and usually means the eyes had closed.
⏳ How long?
Begin with what is easy and grow in gentle steps. Ten collected minutes restore more than forty drifting ones. The classical teachers of this art kept the deepest part of it short.
🛌 What Yoga Nidrā Is one name, two meanings, and two thousand years between them
Nidrā is sleep. Yoga is union, or the discipline that leads to it. The compound has been read both ways for as long as it has existed: "the sleep that is yoga" and "the yoga of sleep". Before we can ask how it is realised we must be clear which thing we are speaking of, because two quite different things now share the name.
| 🕉️ The classical Yoga-nidrā | 🛌 The modern Yoga Nidra | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A state: the deep rest of the absorbed yogi; a name for samādhi, or for the Fourth | A method: a guided relaxation, practised lying down |
| Where it is found | Mahābhārata and Purāṇas (the sleep of Viṣṇu); Devī Māhātmya (the Goddess); Haṭha texts and the Yoga-tārāvalī | Classes, recordings and teacher-training courses since the 1960s and 70s |
| Posture | Not specified; the yogi is usually seated in his practice | Śavāsana, flat on the back |
| Eyes | Not specified as closed. The gaze-seals of Haṭha, half-open, are its usual companions | Closed |
| How it is reached | By long practice that stills breath and mind | By following a voice through a set sequence |
| Awareness | Fully awake: "a sleep made of awareness" | Intended to stay awake at the edge of sleep; in practice, often lost |
| Its aim | Freedom | Rest, relief of stress, better sleep; for some schools, also self-knowledge |
Scholars who have traced the word through the manuscripts find it first in the epics, as the name of Lord Viṣṇu's sleep between the ages; then as a name of the Goddess; and then, from about the twelfth century, in the texts of yoga, as a synonym for the deepest absorption. None of these old texts describes a lying-down routine with a rotation of attention round the body.
That routine is modern. Its best-known form was put together by Swami Satyananda Saraswati of Bihar, who drew on the Tantric rite of nyāsa, in which mantras are placed on the parts of the body, and whose method also resembles the relaxation therapies developed by Western doctors earlier in the same century. I say this not to belittle it. It is a good and kindly invention and has helped very many people. But the honest account is that a new practice was given an old and exalted name, and that the name promises more than the practice, by itself, usually delivers.
The question of this page is how the method can reach the state.
🔬 Science's word
Researchers describe Yoga Nidra as a guided practice that produces deep relaxation while the person remains, in intention, aware. Some distinguish sharply between this and the classical claim of full awareness in dreamless sleep, and point out that nearly all the published studies concern the first. A newer popular name for the same family of practices is "non-sleep deep rest".
🌿 Āyurveda's word
Caraka teaches that sleep comes when the mind is tired and the senses withdraw from their objects, and he sorts sleep by cause: from tamas, from Kapha, from fatigue, from illness, and the natural sleep of night that "nurses all beings". The yogi's sleep is none of these. It is the withdrawal of the senses without the tamas. See Deep Sleep.
🕉️ Yoga's word
Patañjali counts ordinary sleep as one of the five movements of the mind, to be stilled like the rest: "sleep is the movement that rests on the notion of absence". Yoga-nidrā is what remains when that movement, too, is quiet and awareness has not gone out with it.
🌗 The Four States waking, dream, deep sleep, and the Fourth: the map on which Yoga Nidrā is drawn
सुषुप्तस्थान एकीभूतः प्रज्ञानघन एवानन्दमयो ह्यानन्दभुक्चेतोमुखः प्राज्ञस्तृतीयः पादः ॥yatra supto na kañcana kāmaṃ kāmayate na kañcana svapnaṃ paśyati tat suṣuptam |
suṣupta-sthāna ekī-bhūtaḥ prajñāna-ghana evānanda-mayo hy ānanda-bhuk ceto-mukhaḥ prājñas tṛtīyaḥ pādaḥ ||Where one, asleep, desires no desire and sees no dream: that is deep sleep.
The one whose field is deep sleep, become one, a single mass of knowing,
Made of bliss, enjoying bliss, whose face is awareness:
This is Prājña, the third quarter.
The shortest of the great Upaniṣads maps the whole of experience in twelve sentences. Waking is the first quarter; dream the second; and here is the third, deep sleep. Look at how it is described. Not as nothing. Ekī-bhūta: gathered into one. Prajñāna-ghana: a solid mass of knowing. Ānanda-maya: made of bliss. Every night we are given this, and every morning we can say only, "I slept well; I knew nothing".
The whole longing of Yoga Nidrā is in that gap: to be present at what we are already given.
Caturtha, the Fourth; later called turīya. It is not a fourth state after the three, as a fourth room follows three. It is what is present in all three: the awareness in which waking, dream and sleep come and go. The Yoga-tārāvalī called it the bed on which the yogi's sleep is taken.
प्रस्वापं तमसा जन्तोस्तुरीयं त्रिषु सन्ततम् ॥sattvāj jāgaraṇaṃ vidyād rajasā svapnam ādiśet |
prasvāpaṃ tamasā jantos turīyaṃ triṣu santatam ||Know waking to come from sattva;
Dream is taught to be from rajas;
Deep sleep, from tamas, in a living being;
And the Fourth runs unbroken through the three.
The Lord to Uddhava, joining the states to the three qualities. Ordinary deep sleep is tamas: rest bought with darkness. Turīyaṃ triṣu santatam: the Fourth is "continuous in the three". This single phrase explains what Yoga Nidrā seeks: the rest of the third state without its tamas, by way of what was never asleep.
📈 Chart 1 · Three states, and the Fourth that runs through them
The Māṇḍūkya's map. Each night we travel along the top row and lose ourselves between the boxes. The two places marked "the sill" are the junctions: where waking has let go and the next state has not yet formed. Yoga Nidrā is the art of standing at a junction, and finding there what lies under all three.
🌊 The same map, drawn by the brain's rhythms
| Rhythm | Cycles per second | State | The eyes | Yoga Nidrā |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 🏃 Beta | 13–30 | Active waking: thinking, doing, worrying | Open, moving quickly | Where we begin |
| 🌤️ Alpha | 8–13 | Relaxed waking | Appears strongly when the eyes close, and when the gaze is at rest | The first stage of every relaxation |
| 🌙 Theta | 4–8 | Drowsiness; the passage into sleep; dream-like images | Slow, rolling movements under the lids | The sill. Most practices aim here; most people fall asleep here |
| 🌑 Delta | below 4 | Deep, dreamless sleep | Still | The classical claim: this, with awareness. Rarely recorded |
📈 Chart 2 · The descent, and where awareness is lost
A picture of the idea, not a recording. Both lines go down the same stairs. The body of the sleeper and the body of the yogi are in the same condition. The difference is whether someone is still there.
🗂️ Every Kind of Yoga Nidrā the classical forms, the modern schools, and their cousins East and West
Under the one name, and beside it, there are many practices. I list all that I know of, so that you can see the family whole. The two columns to read are the last two: what each asks of the eyes, and where it most often goes astray.
| Form | Whose, and when | How it is done | The eyes | Its usual difficulty |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 🐍 The sleep of Viṣṇu | Mahābhārata, Purāṇas | Not a practice: the Lord's rest between the ages, in which the worlds are withdrawn into Him and He remains aware | Yoganidrā dwells in them | None. It is the model |
| 🔱 Yoga-nidrā as samādhi | Haṭha Pradīpikā, Yoga-tārāvalī and other medieval texts | Reached through the seals and the stilling of breath; a name for the absorbed state | The gaze-seals: śāmbhavī, khecarī | Demands long preparation |
| 🌺 The sill of sleep | Vijñāna Bhairava; Kashmir Śaivism | Catching the instant between waking and sleep, and resting there | Not specified | The instant is brief and usually missed |
| 🪷 Śavāsana | Haṭha Pradīpikā 1.32 | Lying on the back like a corpse; it "removes fatigue and gives rest to the mind" | Closed, by custom | Sleep, or restlessness |
| 🧘 Satyananda Yoga Nidra | Swami Satyananda Saraswati, Bihar School; taught from the 1960s | Eight stages lying down: settling, resolve, rotation of attention through the body, breath, opposite sensations, images, resolve, return | Closed | Sleep. The instruction "do not sleep" is repeated throughout for this reason |
| 🏔️ Himalayan tradition | Swami Rama; Swami Veda Bharati | Systematic relaxation and a journey through sixty-one points, then attention led down from the brow to the throat to the heart; conscious dreamless sleep, kept to about ten minutes | Closed | Very advanced in its full form; the preparations are often mistaken for it |
| 🌿 iRest | Richard Miller, psychologist; from the 1990s | Ten steps moving through the five bodies: intention, an inner refuge, body, breath, feelings, thoughts, joy, the witness | Closed, or open if preferred | Becomes a talking exercise; sleep |
| 🕊️ Amrit method; Sivananda relaxation; others | Yogi Amrit Desai; the Sivananda schools; many teachers | Guided release of the body part by part, with suggestion and intention | Closed | Sleep |
| 🌙 "Non-sleep deep rest" | A name popularised by an American neuroscientist around 2020 | Any short guided relaxation of this kind, stripped of Sanskrit | Closed | Sleep |
| 🏥 Western cousins | Progressive muscle relaxation (1920s); autogenic training (1930s); the body scan of hospital mindfulness courses; clinical hypnosis | Tensing and releasing; silent formulas of warmth and heaviness; attention moved through the body | Closed | Sleep; boredom |
| ☸️ Tibetan dream and sleep yoga | Among the "six yogas" of Nāropa; the Bön tradition | Recognising the dream as a dream; then remaining aware in dreamless sleep, called the clear light | Closed in sleep; daytime practices of gazing prepare for it | Years of training |
| 💭 Lucid dreaming | Studied in sleep laboratories since the 1970s | Knowing that one is dreaming while the dream goes on | The dreamer signals to the laboratory by moving the eyes | Unstable; exciting, and therefore waking |
Read down the fourth column: closed, closed, closed. Read down the fifth: sleep, sleep, sleep. And notice the last row. When scientists wanted proof that a sleeper could be awake inside a dream, the dreamers sent it by a prearranged movement of the eyes, because in dreaming sleep the muscles of the body are switched off and the eyes alone remain free. Even in the laboratory, the eye turned out to be the one thread that connects the sleeper to the waking world.
🪜 The Stages of the Modern Practice what happens in a guided session, why each step is there, and what answers to it in the gaze
📈 Chart 3 · The eight stages of a guided Yoga Nidra
The sequence taught by the Bihar School, which most modern forms follow with variations. Its logic is sound: it leads attention inward by degrees, from the body to the breath to feeling to image, which is the order of the five bodies. Its weakness is that it does so in the posture and with the eyes of sleep.
| Stage | What is done | Why it is there | What answers to it in the gaze |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 · Settling | Lie in śavāsana; be still; hear the sounds of the room | Stillness of the body is the first withdrawal | The body grows still by itself as the eyes grow still |
| 2 · Saṅkalpa | One short, positive resolve, said inwardly three times | A seed planted while the mind is becoming receptive | The sitting is itself one resolve kept: to stay with one thing |
| 3 · Rotation of attention | The mind is moved quickly from part to part: right thumb, second finger… | Gives the restless mind small tasks; relaxes each part; draws the senses in | One task, not sixty: the point. The senses come in with the chief sense |
| 4 · Breath | Watching the breath at navel, chest or nostrils; counting backwards | Slows breath and thought together | The breath slows and evens without being watched |
| 5 · Opposites | Calling up heaviness then lightness, cold then heat, pain then pleasure | Loosens the grip of likes and dislikes; trains evenness | Whatever sensation arises is neither followed nor resisted |
| 6 · Images | A rapid series of named images; or a guided scene | Lets buried impressions surface and pass without reaction | Thoughts and images arise against the still gaze and pass; one stays the witness |
| 7 · Saṅkalpa | The same resolve, repeated | Planted now in the deepest quiet | What one truly intends becomes clear in that quiet |
| 8 · Return | Awareness of body, room; movement; sitting up | A gentle re-entry | There is nothing to return from; one was never away |
I do not say the eight stages are unnecessary. For a tense and exhausted person, to be led by a kind voice through the body is a mercy. I say that each stage is a means of producing a condition, and that the same conditions arise, more simply and without the risk of sleep, when the eye rests.
🧠 What Science Has Measured the brain at the edge of sleep, the trials of Yoga Nidra, and the one claim still waiting for proof
🌊 The rhythms
During guided Yoga Nidra, recordings show the alpha rhythm of calm wakefulness, deepening toward theta. One recent study found something more interesting: patches of the brain showing the slow waves of sleep while the person remained awake and following instructions, as if parts of the cortex were resting in turn. 🟢
🧪 The chemistry
In a brain-imaging study in Copenhagen, experienced practitioners of Yoga Nidra showed a rise of about two-thirds in the release of dopamine in a deep region of the brain during the practice, together with a fall in the urge to act. The authors linked it to the sense of contented, effortless awareness. A small study, often quoted and not yet repeated. 🟡
🫀 The nerves
Heart-rate variability shifts toward the calming, parasympathetic branch during Yoga Nidra, whether or not it is preceded by postures. Breathing slows. Muscle tone falls. These are the marks of deep relaxation. 🟢
🌙 Sleep
In a randomised trial in people with chronic insomnia, Yoga Nidra improved sleep about as well as the standard psychological treatment, and increased the deepest stage of sleep. An eleven-minute daily practice improved stress and sleep quality in a large online trial. 🟢
🩺 Other conditions
Smaller trials report benefit for anxiety, for the distress of menstrual disorders, for stress in students and teachers, and, in the iRest form, for soldiers with post-traumatic stress. The studies are mostly small and of mixed quality, and the practice has been found safe. 🟡
❓ The unproven claim
In 1970 the yogi Swami Rama was examined at a research foundation in Kansas. The investigators reported that he produced the slow delta waves of deep sleep at will, snoring gently, and afterwards repeated what had been said in the room. It is the best-known evidence for conscious dreamless sleep, and it rests on one man on one day. Researchers who have reviewed the field say plainly that this state has not been properly studied. ⚪
🔬 The eye at the edge of sleep
Sleep scientists watch the eyes to know where a person is. In alert waking the eyes dart and blink. As drowsiness comes, blinking slows and the eyes begin slow, rolling drifts under the lids: this is one of the surest signs that sleep is beginning, and the sleeper is rarely aware of it. In dreaming sleep the eyes move rapidly; in deep sleep they are still. And the mere closing of the lids changes the brain: the alpha rhythm rises at once, which is how it was first discovered. So the lid is a switch and the eye is a gauge. A practice that keeps the lids half-open and the eye resting on a point holds the switch between its two positions and keeps the gauge from drifting. 🟢 for the facts of sleep; 🟡 for the application.
What has been measured on Trāṭaka itself is small and honest: better sleep in people with insomnia, a calmer heart rhythm, better attention. No one has yet recorded the brain of a person resting in the gaze and compared it with guided Yoga Nidra. I would be glad to see it done. References are at the end; the rhythms of sleep are set out more fully in Trāṭaka Yoga & Deep Sleep.
🔗 How Trāṭaka Yoga Realises Yoga Nidrā two doors to one threshold, and ten reasons for taking the second
Picture a house with a room in the middle of it, and two doors into that room. One door opens from the bedroom. The other opens from the study. The room in the middle is the sill of the Vijñāna Bhairava: the outer world gone, sleep not yet come.
The modern practice enters from the bedroom. The body lies down, the lights go out, the eyes close, and a voice tries to keep you from doing what every one of those signals has told your body to do. Some people can stop in the doorway. Most walk straight through the middle room without seeing it and are asleep on the far side.
The gaze enters from the study. The body is upright or supported, the eyes are half-open, there is light, there is one object. Everything that needs to fall away falls away: the body's restlessness, the senses' gathering, the breath's unevenness, the mind's chatter. And the one thing that must not fall away, wakefulness, is being held by the very posture of the eyes.
📈 Chart 4 · Two doors to the same threshold
The threshold is one. The difference is the direction of approach, and what the body is being told on the way.
1 · 👁️ The Goddess lives in the eyes
The hymn says Yoganidrā has made her home in the eyes. Sleep enters by the eyes: they grow heavy first. A practice of the eyes meets her at her own door, and meets her awake. ⚪
2 · 🌗 The half-open eye is the eye of the threshold
Fully open is waking. Fully closed is sleep. Half-open belongs to neither, and that is exactly the state being sought. Śrīdhara's sentence is the oldest statement of it. ⚪
3 · 🌫️ The outer field vanishes without closing the lids
When the gaze rests on one point and gathers nothing, the rest of the visual world fades from attention. "The outer field has vanished": the first condition of the verse is met, and the lids are still open. 🟡
4 · ☀️ Sleep does not come
Light reaching an open eye is the nervous system's signal for wakefulness; an object for the eye holds the attention networks on. "Sleep has not yet come": the second condition is met by the same act. The Haṭha text calls Trāṭaka a door shut on drowsiness. 🟡
5 · 🪨 The body becomes as if asleep
I find the body grows stiller and lighter as the gaze settles, until it is hardly felt. This is the "as if asleep" of the Haṭha verse, and the release that the rotation of attention aims at part by part. ⚪
6 · 🌬️ The breath becomes fine
The Haṭha definition adds "without breathing out or in": the breath so slow that it is scarcely there. After every sitting I find the breath quiet and equal in both nostrils. The seed verse promises it: the stir of the breath is stilled. ⚪
7 · 🧩 No voice is needed
A guided practice depends on a recording or a teacher, and attention to a voice is still attention going outward. The gaze is silent and self-kept. It can be done anywhere, for any length of time. ⚪
8 · 🪜 It includes the stages
Stillness, one resolve, senses withdrawn, breath evened, sensations met with evenness, images allowed to pass: each stage of the guided method has its counterpart in the sitting, as the table above shows, arising in the same order without being announced. ⚪
9 · 🛋️ It may be done reclining
The practice page describes how one may sit, recline or lie with the arm supported. So the body can be given the full ease of lying down while the eyes keep their post. The posture of sleep, with the eyes of waking. ⚪
10 · 🌙 It prepares true sleep and the guided practice alike
Done before lying down, it lets the senses turn back first, so that sleep is deep. Done before a guided Yoga Nidra, it lets one stay awake through it. In a small study, daily Trāṭaka improved sleep in people with insomnia. 🟢 for that study; ⚪ for the rest.
सम्प्राप्तयोगनिद्रस्य कालो नास्ति कदाचन ॥abhyaset khecarīṃ tāvad yāvat syād yoga-nidritaḥ |
samprāpta-yoga-nidrasya kālo nāsti kadācana ||Let one practise the seal
Until one is in yoga-sleep.
For one who has attained yoga-sleep
There is no time at all.
The one place where the Haṭha Pradīpikā uses the word. Yoga-nidrā is reached through a mudrā, a seal, practised "until" it comes: again a fruit of steady practice, not of lying down. And its mark is kālo nāsti: there is no time. Not that time was lost, as in sleep. That it was not there.
नेत्ररोगा विनश्यन्ति दिव्यदृष्टिः प्रजायते ॥evam abhyāsa-yogena śāmbhavī jāyate dhruvam |
netra-rogā vinaśyanti divya-dṛṣṭiḥ prajāyate ||By the discipline of practising thus,
Śāmbhavī certainly arises;
Diseases of the eye are destroyed,
And divine sight is born.
What the practice of Trāṭaka leads to, according to Gheraṇḍa: śāmbhavī, the seal in which the eyes are open and attention rests within. That is the gaze-seal which the Haṭha texts set beside yoga-nidrā. The chain is short: the gentle gaze, practised, becomes the inward-resting gaze; and the inward-resting gaze is the waking sleep.
🧅 The Five Bodies at Rest the journey inward that every Yoga Nidrā makes, and what the gaze gives to each layer
The Taittirīya Upaniṣad teaches that we are five bodies, one within another: of food, of breath, of mind, of understanding and of bliss. The modern schools of Yoga Nidrā, to their credit, built their sequences on this map: they lead attention from the outermost body to the innermost, one layer at a time. Deep sleep, in the Upaniṣads, is the nightly return to the innermost. Yoga Nidrā is the same return, made awake.
| The body | Stage of the guided practice | What rests here | What the gaze gives |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🍚 Annamaya · body of food | Settling; rotation of attention through the limbs | Muscle, joint and skin; the urge to move | Stillness that spreads from the eyes through the face and frame, until the body is hardly felt |
| 🌬️ Prāṇamaya · body of breath | Breath awareness and counting | The breath grows slow and fine; the heart quietens | An even breath in both nostrils, arriving without counting |
| 💭 Manomaya · body of mind | Opposite sensations and feelings | Liking and disliking; the senses' gathering | The chief sense withdrawn; sensations met with evenness |
| 💡 Vijñānamaya · body of understanding | Images; the witness | Old impressions rise and pass, watched and not followed | A steady seat from which images are seen as images |
| 🌸 Ānandamaya · body of bliss | The quiet before the return | Contentment without a cause: what deep sleep is made of | Nothing is given. This is what was underneath |
🌱 A word on saṅkalpa
The modern practice sets great store by the saṅkalpa, the resolve planted at the beginning and the end: a short sentence of what one wishes to become. It is a gentle and often helpful custom. But read again the verse of the Yoga-tārāvalī: the yogi's sleep unfolds "when the root of saṅkalpa and vikalpa is cut". In the classical state there is no resolving, because there is no one wanting anything. The two are not in conflict. A resolve is a good boat. The classical texts are describing the far shore, where it is left on the sand.
⚖️ Rest according to your constitution
🌬️ The Vāta rester
Trouble: cannot lie still; the mind races the moment the body stops; cold; startles.
Needs: warmth, a covering with some weight, a regular hour, and a mind already gathered before lying down. The first element, one point, is the medicine. This constitution needs rest most and finds it hardest.
🔥 The Pitta rester
Trouble: lies down to relax efficiently; plans; judges how well it is going; heat in the head.
Needs: coolness, dim light, and no goal. Rest cannot be achieved, only allowed. Half-open eyes and gentleness are the medicine.
🌊 The Kapha rester
Trouble: asleep within two minutes; wakes heavy; loves the practice for the wrong reason.
Needs: not to lie down at all for this. Seated, in the morning, in light, with the eyes open. The wakeful eye is the medicine. For this constitution the lying-down form is simply more sleep.
🤝 Companions of the Practice what else supports deep rest
🧍 A body that has moved
A body that has been used rests gladly; one that has sat all day lies down full of unspent tension. Gentle postures before resting are the classical order: āsana, then śavāsana. See Yoga Āsanas, and for long quiet holds that are half-way to rest, Yin Yoga.
🌙 Real sleep at night
Yoga Nidrā is not a substitute for sleep, and a person deeply short of sleep will sleep in any practice, rightly. Mend the nights first. See Deep Sleep.
🧘 A sitting practice
The classical texts treat yoga-nidrā as the fruit of meditation, not a separate thing. A mind trained to stay with one object while sitting is the mind that can stay awake while the body rests. See Meditation.
🕯️ The hour and the place
Not directly after a meal, when Kapha rules the head. A quiet room, neither bright nor dark, comfortably warm. The same hour daily, so that the body learns it.
🧭 A lighter load
What floods in when the body lies still is whatever the day has not digested. Worry and old hurt ease with practice and with understanding. See Overthinking and Trauma. Those who carry trauma often do better with eyes open, seated, for short periods.
🎧 The guided practice itself
I do not ask anyone to give up a recording that helps them. Use the gaze first, and then let the voice lead you. The two were made for each other: one supplies wakefulness, the other supplies ease.
🌏 Other Paths and Views what other peoples and sciences have known about being awake in sleep
☸️ Tibet: the clear light of sleep
Tibetan yogis train first to know the dream as a dream, and then to stay aware when the dream dissolves into dreamless sleep, which they call the clear light. They hold that the moment of falling asleep is a small rehearsal of the moment of death, and that one who can remain aware through the first can remain aware through the second. It is the classical Yoga Nidrā under another name.
☸️ The Buddha's sleep
The Buddha lay down on his right side "in the lion's posture, mindful and clearly aware, having fixed in his mind the time of rising". His monks were taught the "practice of wakefulness": to cleanse the mind while walking and sitting through the watches of the night, and to sleep only in the middle watch, mindfully.
☯️ The sleeping immortal
The Taoist sage Chén Tuán of Mount Huà is remembered as the master of "sleeping practice", said to lie in stillness for months at a time. The Taoists distinguish the sleep of ordinary people, in which the spirit is scattered, from the sleep of the adept, in which the breath is fine and the spirit is gathered and bright.
✝️ ☪️ The heart that wakes
"I sleep, but my heart waketh," says the Song of Songs. And the Prophet of Islam is reported to have said that his eyes slept but his heart did not sleep. The Qur'ān tells of the young men who slept in a cave for three centuries: "you would have thought them awake, though they were asleep". The scriptures of the West know the state, and describe it by the eyes and the heart.
🏛️ The temples of sleep
The sick of ancient Greece travelled to the temples of the healing god, purified themselves, and lay down to sleep in the sanctuary, expecting to be healed or instructed in the night. For a thousand years the most respected medicine of the Mediterranean world was a prepared and sacred sleep.
🏥 The Western relaxers
In the 1920s an American physician taught patients to tense and release each muscle group in turn, having found that anxious thought and muscular tension could not easily coexist. In the 1930s a German psychiatrist taught silent formulas: "my right arm is heavy; my right arm is warm". Both resemble, and may have helped shape, the modern Yoga Nidra. Both are done with closed eyes, and in both people very often fall asleep.
💤 The short sleep
A study for the American space agency found that a planned nap of under half an hour made long-haul pilots markedly more alert and accurate. Short daytime rest is real medicine. It is also sleep, and the grogginess that follows a longer one is the mark of the difference between it and the yogi's rest.
🧪 Unusual and unproven ideas
For completeness. Tanks of warm salt water in darkness; headphones with pulsing tones; schedules of many short sleeps in place of one long one; recordings played to the sleeper in the hope of learning. Some relax; none has shown that it produces awareness in deep sleep, and the fragmented sleep schedules are harmful. Hold them lightly.
📚 The storytellers
Every people has its long sleeper: Rip Van Winkle in the Catskills, the princess behind the thorns, the seven of Ephesus, the Talmud's Honi who slept seventy years. In each the sleeper wakes to find the world has moved on without him. And a Chinese sage dreamt he was a butterfly, and woke not knowing whether he was a man who had dreamt a butterfly or a butterfly now dreaming a man. The stories know that sleep is a loss of the world. Only the yogis asked whether it need be a loss of oneself.
📖 Stories and Allegories the teaching, told the old way
नाभिह्रदाम्बुजादासीद्ब्रह्मा विश्वसृजां पतिः ॥yasyāmbhasi śayānasya yoga-nidrāṃ vitanvataḥ |
nābhi-hradāmbujād āsīd brahmā viśva-sṛjāṃ patiḥ ||As He lay upon the waters,
Extending His yoga-sleep,
From the lotus of the lake of His navel
Was born Brahmā, the lord of the makers of the worlds.
Here is the original Yoga Nidrā. The Lord lies on the waters between two creations. The word is vitanvataḥ, "spreading out, extending" His sleep, as one extends an activity and not as one falls into a stupor. And see what comes of it: out of this sleep the creator himself is born, and with him the whole world.
It is the tradition's deepest teaching about rest. The Lord's sleep is not an absence. Creation comes out of it. In a small way this is true of us: what is best in a human being's work comes out of real rest, and not out of exhaustion.
देहजेनाग्निना दग्धो भस्मसादभवत्क्षणात् ॥sa tāvat tasya ruṣṭasya dṛṣṭi-pātena bhārata |
deha-jenāgninā dagdho bhasma-sād abhavat kṣaṇāt ||And he, by the falling of the glance
Of that angered sleeper, O Bhārata,
Burnt by a fire born of the body,
Was turned to ashes in an instant.
King Mucukunda fought for the gods through a whole age without rest, and was granted one boon: to sleep undisturbed, and that whoever woke him should be burnt by his first glance. He lay down in a cave. Ages later a tyrant, chasing Kṛṣṇa, kicked the sleeper awake. Mucukunda opened his eyes.
The Bhāgavatam's word is dṛṣṭi-pāta: "the fall of the glance". The power stored in that long stillness came out through the eyes. Our tradition does not think of deep rest as weakness. It thinks of it as the gathering of a force, and it places that force in the gaze.
🪷 The two demons
While Viṣṇu lay in yoga-nidrā, two demons, Madhu and Kaiṭabha, sprang from the wax of his ear and set upon Brahmā. Commentators read them as the two enemies of every meditator: dullness and distraction, tamas and rajas, born of what has been heard and not digested. They could not be defeated while the Lord slept, and He could not be woken by force. Brahmā, with a one-pointed heart, praised the Goddess in His eyes. She withdrew; He woke; and the two were overcome.
🛌 Kumbhakarṇa's slip of the tongue
The giant Kumbhakarṇa performed austerities to win a boon. The gods, alarmed, had the goddess of speech twist his tongue, and where he meant to ask for the throne of Indra he asked for nidrā, sleep. He slept six months at a time and woke only to eat. He is the picture of tamas: enormous strength, drowned. The same word, nidrā, names his curse and the yogi's attainment. The difference between them is the whole subject of this page.
🏹 The conqueror of sleep
One of Arjuna's names in the Gītā is Guḍākeśa, which the commentators explain as "lord of sleep": one who has mastered it. It is to Guḍākeśa that the Lord says, "I am the Self seated in the hearts of all beings". The teaching is given to one who is awake.
🦅 The falcon folds its wings
The Upaniṣad's image of sleep: as a falcon, having flown about in the sky, grows tired, folds its wings and is borne down to its nest, so the person hastens to that state where he desires nothing and sees no dream. Yoga Nidrā is the falcon folding its wings in mid-air, and resting on the wind.
🚪 The watchman at the door
A household sleeps; one man sits at the gate with a lamp. He does nothing. He is not anxious. He simply does not sleep, and because he does not, the house is safe to rest. In Yoga Nidrā the body, the senses and the thinking mind are the household. Awareness is the watchman. The practice is not to give him tasks. It is to keep his lamp lit.
🌊 The lake at night
By day a lake is ruffled by wind and crossed by boats, and it reflects nothing clearly. At night the wind drops and the boats are tied up, and if there is a moon the whole sky lies in the water. Ordinary sleep is the lake on a moonless night: calm, and dark. Yoga Nidrā is the same calm with the moon risen.
❓ Misconceptions, Gently Answered ten things sincere people believe about Yoga Nidrā and about the gaze
1 · "Yoga Nidra is an ancient lying-down practice."
The name is ancient and means the absorbed rest of the yogi. The guided routine is a creation of the twentieth century. Both deserve respect, for different reasons.
2 · "If I fall asleep, it still works."
Sleep is good, and you may have needed it. But a practice defined as awareness at the edge of sleep has not happened if awareness was not there. It was a nap, and a nap is a fine thing to call by its own name.
3 · "One hour of Yoga Nidra equals four hours of sleep."
This is repeated everywhere and has never been measured. Deep relaxation is restorative; it does not replace the work the brain does in a night's sleep.
4 · "It must be done lying down with the eyes closed."
That is the modern custom. No classical text on yoga-nidrā prescribes it, and the commentators warn that closed eyes dissolve the mind into sleep.
5 · "It is the same as meditation."
Meditation holds one object, awake. The guided practice moves attention through many objects toward the edge of sleep. The classical yoga-nidrā is where the two meet: the fruit of the first, in the depth of the second.
6 · "It is hypnosis."
The methods are cousins. The difference lies in the aim: hypnosis narrows attention and heightens suggestibility for a purpose set by another; Yoga Nidrā aims at a wider and freer awareness that belongs to oneself.
7 · "The deeper I go, the less I should remember."
The reverse. The mark of the yogi's sleep is that it is "made of awareness". Gaps are sleep. Continuity is the measure.
8 · "It is suitable for everyone, always."
It is gentle and safe for most. For those carrying trauma, lying still with closed eyes can bring up more than is helpful; for those with low mood and heaviness, more lying down is not the remedy. Both do better upright, with the eyes open.
9 · "Trāṭaka is the opposite of relaxation."
Staring is. A gentle gaze with half-open eyes is deeply restful: the eye, the busiest muscle-driven organ we have, is at last allowed to stop. The body follows it down.
10 · "Trāṭaka Yoga replaces Yoga Nidrā."
It realises it. If you love the guided practice, keep it and sit with the gaze first. If you have always fallen asleep in it, you now know why, and what to do.
📜 More Verses on sleep, on the Fourth, and on the rest that does not darken
Two sūtras on sleep, thirty apart. In the first Patañjali classes sleep with the movements of the mind: it is not the mind's stillness but one more of its activities, the one whose content is "nothing". In the second he lists, among the ways of steadying the mind, attention to what is known in dream and in sleep. He does not say how. The tradition of Yoga Nidrā is the working-out of that half-line.
तस्मादेनं स्वपितीत्याचक्षते स्वं ह्यपीतो भवति ॥yatraitat puruṣaḥ svapiti nāma satā somya tadā sampanno bhavati svam apīto bhavati |
tasmād enaṃ svapitīty ācakṣate svaṃ hy apīto bhavati ||"When a person is said to sleep, my dear, then he has become one with Being; he has gone to his own. Therefore they say of him 'he sleeps' (svapiti), for he has gone to his own (svam apīta)."
The sage Uddālaka explains the very word for sleep to his son: svapiti, "he sleeps", is svam apīti, "he has gone into his own". In sleep we go home. The only sorrow is that we do not know it. Yoga Nidrā is going home with the lamp lit.
एवं ह वै तत्सर्वं परे देवे मनस्येकीभवति । तेन तर्ह्येष पुरुषो न शृणोति न पश्यति … स्वपितीत्याचक्षते ॥yathā gārgya marīcayo 'rkasyāstaṃ gacchataḥ sarvā etasmiṃs tejo-maṇḍala ekī-bhavanti | tāḥ punaḥ punar udayataḥ pracaranti |
evaṃ ha vai tat sarvaṃ pare deve manasy ekī-bhavati | tena tarhy eṣa puruṣo na śṛṇoti na paśyati … svapitīty ācakṣate ||"As the rays of the setting sun, Gārgya, all become one in that disc of light, and go forth again when it rises: just so all this becomes one in the higher god, the mind. Then the person does not hear, does not see … and they say, 'he sleeps'."
The senses are rays, and the mind is their sun. At evening the rays are drawn back into the disc. This is the Upaniṣad's account of falling asleep, and it is also an exact description of the withdrawal of the senses in yoga. The difference is only whether the sun itself goes dark.
शवासनं श्रान्तिहरं चित्तविश्रान्तिकारकम् ॥uttānaṃ śava-vad bhūmau śayanaṃ tac chavāsanam |
śavāsanaṃ śrānti-haraṃ citta-viśrānti-kārakam ||Lying on the ground on one's back,
Like a corpse: that is śavāsana.
Śavāsana removes fatigue
And brings rest to the mind.
The one verse in the Haṭha Pradīpikā on the posture in which the modern practice is done. It makes two modest claims: it takes away tiredness, and gives the mind repose. It does not call it yoga-nidrā. That word the same book keeps for the fourth chapter, and for the state reached through the seals.
From the Śaiva tradition of Kashmir. The Fourth is not to be visited and left. It is to be poured into the other three tailavat, "like oil", which spreads and soaks through whatever it touches. First a taste at the junctions; then, by degrees, a waking, a dreaming and a sleeping that are all saturated with awareness.
चन्द्रार्कावपि लीनतामुपनयन्निस्पन्दभावेन यः ।ardhonmīlita-locanaḥ sthira-manā nāsāgra-dattekṣaṇaś
candrārkāv api līnatām upanayan nispanda-bhāvena yaḥ |With eyes half-open, mind steady,
The gaze given toward the nose-tip,
Bringing even sun and moon to rest
By his own stillness…
The Haṭha Pradīpikā's portrait of the yogi at the summit, and I quote it for its second line. Candrārkau: the moon and the sun, which are the two breaths, the two nostrils, night and day, sleep and waking. Līnatām upanayan: bringing them to dissolution. When sun and moon are both at rest, there is neither day nor night; and the posture in which this is done is given in the first word: half-open eyes.
🗂️ Sources, Editions and Notes so that you can check every line
📚 Texts and editions
📚 How the verses were checked
- Quoted exactly as on the Trāṭaka Yoga page, where the editions are given: Śrīdhara Svāmī on Bhagavad Gītā 5.27; Haṭha Pradīpikā 4.41 and 4.112; Gheraṇḍa Saṃhitā 1.54.
- Quoted as in Trāṭaka Yoga & Deep Sleep: Bhagavad Gītā 2.69; Devī Māhātmya 1.70–71; Yoga-tārāvalī 25–26; Vijñāna Bhairava 75; Haṭha Pradīpikā 4.49; Māṇḍūkya Upaniṣad 5; Śrīmad Bhāgavatam 10.51.12 and 11.25.20; Yoga Sūtra 1.10, 1.38; Chāndogya Upaniṣad 6.8.1; Praśna Upaniṣad 4.2. The falcon is Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 4.3.19, paraphrased.
- Śrīmad Bhāgavatam 1.3.2, checked against the text at vedabase.io.
- In the standard readings, not separately checked: Māṇḍūkya Upaniṣad 7 (abridged); Haṭha Pradīpikā 1.32; Śiva Sūtra 1.7 and 3.20. The Goddess coming forth from the eyes, mouth, nostrils, arms and heart of Viṣṇu is from Devī Māhātmya, chapter 1, paraphrased; Kumbhakarṇa's boon is from the Uttara-kāṇḍa of the Rāmāyaṇa as commonly retold.
- The history of the word and of the modern practice follows Jason Birch and Jacqueline Hargreaves, "Yoganidrā: an understanding of the history and context" (2015).
- The Song of Songs is quoted from the King James Version (5:2); the Qur'ān (18:18) and the saying of the Prophet are paraphrased; the butterfly is from the Zhuāngzǐ, chapter 2.
- The Devanāgarī on this page is generated from the transliteration. If you find an error in either, please tell me and I will correct it.
🔬 The science of Yoga Nidrā
🔬 References
- Parker S, Bharati SV, Fernandez M. Defining yoga-nidra: traditional accounts, physiological research, and future directions. International Journal of Yoga Therapy 2013;23:11–16.
- Pandi-Perumal SR, Spence DW, Srivastava N, et al. The origin and clinical relevance of Yoga Nidra. Sleep and Vigilance 2022;6:61–84.
- Kjaer TW, Bertelsen C, Piccini P, et al. Increased dopamine tone during meditation-induced change of consciousness. Cognitive Brain Research 2002;13:255–259.
- Lou HC, Kjaer TW, Friberg L, et al. A 15O-H2O PET study of meditation and the resting state of normal consciousness. Human Brain Mapping 1999;7:98–105.
- Datta K, Tripathi M, Verma M, et al. Yoga nidra practice shows improvement in sleep in patients with chronic insomnia: a randomized controlled trial. National Medical Journal of India 2021;34:143–150.
- Datta K, Mallick HN, Tripathi M, et al. Electrophysiological evidence of local sleep during yoga nidra practice. Frontiers in Neurology 2022;13:910794.
- Moszeik EN, von Oertzen T, Renner KH. Effectiveness of a short Yoga Nidra meditation on stress, sleep, and well-being in a large and diverse sample. Current Psychology 2022;41:5272–5286.
- Markil N, Whitehurst M, Jacobs PL, Zoeller RF. Yoga Nidra relaxation increases heart rate variability and is unaffected by a prior bout of Hatha yoga. Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine 2012;18:953–958.
- Rani K, Tiwari SC, Singh U, et al. Impact of Yoga Nidra on psychological general wellbeing in patients with menstrual irregularities. International Journal of Yoga 2011;4:20–25.
- Stankovic L. Transforming trauma: a qualitative feasibility study of integrative restoration (iRest) yoga nidra on combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder. International Journal of Yoga Therapy 2011;21:23–37.
- Green E, Green A. Beyond Biofeedback. Delacorte Press, 1977. (The account of Swami Rama at the Menninger Foundation.)
- LaBerge SP, Nagel LE, Dement WC, Zarcone VP. Lucid dreaming verified by volitional communication during REM sleep. Perceptual and Motor Skills 1981;52:727–732.
- Rosekind MR, Smith RM, Miller DL, et al. Alertness management: strategic naps in operational settings. Journal of Sleep Research 1995;4(S2):62–66.
- Jacobson E. Progressive Relaxation. University of Chicago Press, 1929. Schultz JH. Das autogene Training. Thieme, 1932.
👁️ Studies of Trāṭaka
👁️ Trāṭaka
- Talwadkar S, Jagannathan A, Raghuram N. Effect of trataka on cognitive functions in the elderly. International Journal of Yoga 2014;7:96–103.
- Raghavendra BR, Ramamurthy V. Changes in heart rate variability following yogic visual concentration (Trataka). Heart India 2014.
- Raghavendra BR, Singh P. Immediate effect of yogic visual concentration on cognitive performance. Journal of Traditional and Complementary Medicine 2016;6:34–36.
- Mallick T, Kulkarni R. The effect of trataka, a yogic visual concentration practice, on critical flicker fusion. Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine 2010;16:1265–1267.
- Swathi PS, Bhat R, Saoji AA. Effect of Trataka (yogic visual concentration) on the performance in the Corsi-block tapping task: a repeated measures study. Frontiers in Psychology 2021;12:773049.
- Swathi PS, Saoji AA, Bhat R. The role of trataka in ameliorating visual strain and promoting psychological well-being during prolonged use of digital displays: a randomized controlled trial. Work 2022;71:327–333.
- Shathirapathiy G, Mooventhan A, Mangaiarkarasi N, et al. Effect of trataka (yogic gazing) on insomnia severity and quality of sleep in people with insomnia. Explore (NY) 2022;18:100–103.
- Rajbhoj PH, et al. Effect of Trataka Kriya on selected psychological parameters in school teachers during the COVID-19 pandemic situation: a randomized controlled trial. Indian Journal of Public Health Research & Development.
All of these studies used the classical form of the practice, most of them with a candle flame, in healthy volunteers or in people with poor sleep or tired eyes. None compared Trāṭaka with guided Yoga Nidrā, and none tested the form I teach. I list them so that you can see exactly how much is known, and how much is not.
🙏 A Closing Blessing from one who looks, to one who longs to rest
नमस्तस्यै नमस्तस्यै नमस्तस्यै नमो नमः ॥yā devī sarva-bhūteṣu nidrā-rūpeṇa saṃsthitā |
namas tasyai namas tasyai namas tasyai namo namaḥ ||To the Goddess who abides in all beings
In the form of sleep:
Homage to her, homage to her,
Homage to her, homage, homage.
The gods' hymn to the Goddess names her in every form in which she dwells in living beings: as consciousness, as intelligence, as hunger, as shadow, as power, as peace. And as nidrā, sleep. Our tradition bows to sleep. It does not treat it as lost time or as an enemy. It asks only that we meet her awake.
My dear friend, you have read a great deal about rest. Now let me take it all away again, and leave you with almost nothing. 🙏
You are tired, and you have been tired for a long time. Every night you are carried into a place of great peace, and every morning you come back from it remembering nothing. There is a way of going there with the lamp lit.
Sit, or lean back and let yourself be held. Let your eyes come half-open, and rest them softly on one point, as it is taught at Trāṭaka Yoga. Not closed, or sleep will take you as she always has. Half-open. Let the body go the way of sleep: heavy, warm, still. Let the breath grow fine. Let the room fade from your interest. And stay.
On that sill, where the world has gone and sleep has not come, the texts say the Goddess shines. I will not describe it. I will only say that it is nearer than you think, and that it is entered through the eyes.
May you rest as the Lord rests upon the waters. May the watchman keep his lamp. May the moon rise over the still lake. And may you wake from it, when you wake, into a world made new. 🌗💛
Trataki Dhruvaji