There are not many practices you can say are easy and they work. Yoga nidra is one of them. For people living with trauma, PTSD, or chronic nervous system dysregulation that follows difficult life experiences, it may also be one of the most accessible and effective tools available.
In this conversation, Breathing Deeply founder Brandt Passalacqua speaks with Melissa Russell, C-IAYT and Breathing Deeply graduate, about her course on yoga nidra for trauma, available on the Breathing Deeply Wellness platform.
Yoga nidra translates from Sanskrit as yogic sleep. It is a practice rooted in the yoga tradition that brings the body into a state of deep rest and healing through a sequence of guided prompts, listened to while lying down, seated, or for some people, even walking.
Unlike many forms of meditation, yoga nidra does not ask you to sit in silence and observe your thoughts. You are guided continuously through a series of prompts, body scanning, breath sensing, visualisation, and other techniques depending on the tradition and teacher.
This is one of the reasons it tends to be more accessible than other meditation forms, particularly for people who have struggled with traditional seated practice or who find the idea of sitting alone with their thoughts uncomfortable.
The physiological effect of yoga nidra is specific and well-documented. The practice guides the nervous system from the sympathetic state, fight or flight, into the parasympathetic state, rest and digest. This is the state in which the body heals, restores, and regulates.
For people living with trauma or PTSD, the nervous system is often chronically tilted toward activation. The body stays in a state of low-level alert, scanning for threats, reacting before the conscious mind has time to intervene. Yoga nidra works by creating repeated, accessible experiences of the opposite state, gently training the system back toward balance over time.
The aspects of yoga nidra that make it accessible are the same aspects that make it therapeutic for trauma. The guided prompts give the mind something to follow, which reduces the likelihood of the practice itself becoming activating. The body scan component builds interoception, the ability to feel and interpret physical sensations from inside the body.
Many people with a trauma history are partially or significantly disconnected from physical sensation, having learned to stay in the head and away from the body as a protective strategy. Yoga nidra gently reverses that. By repeatedly scanning the body and noticing sensation in a safe, supported context, people gradually rebuild the connection between mind and body.
As interoception develops, people begin noticing earlier when their nervous system is starting to activate. They feel the breath quicken, notice tension arriving in the chest or shoulders, and sense the shift before it becomes a full sympathetic response. That earlier awareness creates a window for choice that was not previously there.
The breath awareness component of yoga nidra extends this further. As people become more attuned to what their breath does during practice, they naturally begin noticing it in daily life too, and that awareness becomes an early warning system and a self-regulation tool in one.
For many yoga practices, rigorous research is difficult to conduct and slow to accumulate. Yoga nidra is something of an exception.
The iRest Institute, which trains yoga nidra teachers and runs programs internationally, conducted research on yoga nidra used within a veterans hospital setting. The results showed a measurable reduction in PTSD symptoms among participants.
What made the study particularly notable was the response of the participants themselves. The iRest team had anticipated some resistance, expecting that veterans might be reluctant to lie down and rest as part of a therapeutic intervention. Instead, demand grew so rapidly that what began as one class expanded to ten at the same hospital.
The practice spread because it worked, and because it was easy enough that people actually did it.
At Breathing Deeply, yoga nidra has been part of therapeutic practice since the beginning. Across hundreds of clients working with trauma, the pattern of results has been consistent and, particularly in the early years, genuinely surprising.
Clients would arrive with multiple concerns, share their trauma history as part of the intake process, and then report back weeks or months later that something had shifted in ways they had not anticipated and could not fully explain.
The mechanism is part of why this happens. Yoga nidra does not require conscious effort to produce results. The practice works below the level of deliberate cognitive engagement. People lie down, follow the prompts, and then notice six weeks later that they are moving through the world differently.
Yoga nidra is not a miracle. It is a learning process that works with the nervous system’s own capacity for regulation and restoration.
If you’re looking for yoga therapy for your own trauma & PTSD, explore Breathing Deeply Wellness: Guided programs, practices, and support for mental health, chronic conditions, and long-term wellbeing.
If you feel called to support others through complex physical and mental health challenges, our professional Yoga Therapy Training provides mentorship, clinical thinking skills, and whole-person education.
If you are navigating physical and/or mental health challenges, Breathing Deeply Wellness offers accessible programs rooted in yoga therapy principles to support meaningful change.
Breathing Deeply is a Yoga Therapy and Meditation School co-founded by lead teacher Brandt Passalacqua in 2011. Breathing Deeply offers two levels of certification: Foundations of Yoga Therapy and an IAYT-accredited Advanced Program, offering C-IAYT eligibility.
Other offerings include Breathing Deeply Wellness, a service-driven community of Breathing Deeply Yoga Therapists dedicated to helping the public optimize their physical, mental, and spiritual health, an annual online meditation teacher training certification, and specialized yoga therapy courses. Breathing Deeply is an active and thriving community of meditators and yogis, caregivers, therapists, teachers, medical professionals, parents & children with the same intention—to serve others, lessen suffering, and co-create a new paradigm in wellness.
Brandt talks about common questions applicants have about the Breathing Deeply Yoga Therapy Program. Tune in to get the full program details.