Yoga Nidra

What is Yoga Nidra?

Yoga Nidra, often translated as "yogic sleep", is a deeply restorative guided relaxation practice that helps the body rest while the mind remains gently aware.

Many people find Yoga Nidra helpful for reducing stress and anxiety, improving sleep, easing physical tension and creating a greater sense of calm and wellbeing. For those of us living with busy minds, it can offer a rare opportunity to slow down, rest and simply be.

Although it is sometimes described as a form of meditation, Yoga Nidra creates a unique state between wakefulness and sleep that many people find deeply relaxing and restorative.

Recovery isn't just about changing behaviours; it's also about learning to feel safe in your own body again. Yoga Nidra offers a gentle space to begin that journey, encouraging rest, awareness and self-compassion without pressure or expectation. For many people, it can become a way of reconnecting with themselves, one restful practice at a time.

Yoga Nidra offers a gentle way to reconnect with the body without focusing on appearance, performance, or physical achievement. This makes it a supportive practice for many people recovering from an eating disorder.

It guides people into deep relaxation while remaining aware, which can help calm the nervous system and reduce anxiety, stress, and hypervigilance. For someone recovering from an eating disorder, this can create a safer internal environment where difficult thoughts, emotions and physical sensations can feel more manageable.

Yoga nidra can also support interoceptive awareness: the ability to notice internal cues such as hunger, fullness, tension, fatigue, or emotion. Eating disorders can make it difficult to trust these internal signals. Practising gentle, non-judgemental awareness can gradually help rebuild that trust and develop a more compassionate relationship with the body.

Unlike more active forms of yoga, yoga nidra is usually practised lying down or seated, so it is less likely to become associated with compulsive movement or comparison.  It can also encourage self-compassion, rest, emotional regulation, and a sense of choice, all of which are important in recovery.

However, it should be trauma-informed and used alongside appropriate medical, nutritional, and psychological support, rather than as a replacement for treatment.

I'll continue adding new Yoga Nidra recordings to this page, so there's always something new to explore. If there's a particular theme or topic you'd like me to create a Yoga Nidra for, I'd love to hear your ideas.