Meditation could help some people decrease their insomnia symptoms to fall asleep faster.
Meditation benefits our ability to sleep by setting up a calmer mind, decreasing the stress response, regulating circadian rhythms and allowing us to approach sleep differently.
While traditional meditation should help, Dr. Darshan Mehta, Medical Director of the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine, also recommends yoga nidra, or yoga for sleep, as a popular form of meditation for people who struggle to get rest at night. Early research suggests yoga nidra can help to reduce one’s feelings of stress and anxiety and that it may help improve the quality of sleep in those suffering from insomnia.
“It is a series of practices that permit sleep,” Mehta explains of the guided practice. “Most of it is intentional relaxation of the muscle groups and ultimately finding a space of equanimity.”
Unlike other meditative practices, Mehta advises it’s best to practice yoga nidra when you’re trying to go to bed: “The best way to describe it is a body scan. You are sort of scanning different parts of the body, but you are really going into intentional relaxation from one point of the body to another.”
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