Andrew Huberman· PhD
NSDR induces unique neural oscillations first documented by Tang (2019) - delta waves at 1-4 Hz coupled with alpha bursts at 8-12 Hz.
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The evidence is convergent. Multiple independent sources reach the same conclusion, the underlying mechanism is well-characterized, and even the field's most cautious voices treat it as worth doing.
NSDR induces unique neural oscillations first documented by Tang (2019) - delta waves at 1-4 Hz coupled with alpha bursts at 8-12 Hz.
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Yoga Nidra, Non-Sleep Deep Rest (NDSR)
NSDR is superb for reducing your level of alertness, increasing your level of calmness, and putting you into a so-called more parasympathetic, relaxed state.
NSDR is sort of an umbrella term for a variety of different practices, so these are behavioral practices that allow you to direct your brain and body into a particular state, and most typically, that state is one of deep relaxation, but also one in which you can access your bodily and brain systems for teaching yourself how to relax in real time and how to recover some of the sleep that you may not be getting at night, and to restore levels of dopamine in particular areas of the brain that are involved in motivation and cognitive and motor control.
These are practices that are really just self-directed relaxation as a practice that allows people to get better and better at directing their brain states towards more relaxation.
So do a 10 to 30-minute, or 10 or 20-minute non-sleep deep rest protocol.
But this is where the non-sleep deep rest protocols surface again, and can potentially be very beneficial for people to be able to recover, not necessarily, sleep, but for them to maintain a certain amount of autonomic regulation.
So they were where they what we believe is happening in that is they're in the the the brain states of sleep while still being awake once they're in that relaxed space after doing some movement in the beginning or the space to be relaxed and still I should say still versus relaxed still physically
we observe that it creates very dramatic decreases in sympathetic autonomic arousal AKA alert and places the brain into and body into kind of a of a a shallow state of sleep not surprising but a state that is unusual and at least to my knowledge not observed in other meditative states that at least you know to my knowledge but to be fair we didn't do neuroimaging of this so we didn't have a lot of insight into it