Recovery/Sleeping

[xing_jian108]

Go for it, Chen. Just don't kill yourself to stay awake if you feel yourself going. It is said though, that you can have your body totally shut down like normal deep sleeping but still be concious. So your questions about that are answered as it doesn't matter concious or unconcious. The effects are the same. It is said in one of those site I posted that someone has done that before. This person's sleep was never unconcious. So, that's an answer that you can definitely do it. And it will work the same as normal sleep. Only you are concious but your mind is fully rested as normal sleep.

Good luck in not dying in school tomorrow...

A mi tuo Fo
-Xing Jian

[zachsan]

chenzen, i will be interested to see what you discover, but i want you to understand also that this is not the same as a scientific test, and without controls, hard data and a large testing group, neither you nor anyone else should think that it constitutes proof of anything. but if it makes you feel good, by all means, knock yourself out.

as for the tv thing... often, when i watch tv, i not only have bad posture, but am drinking a beer or smoking a cigarette at the same time. and you're right, it's not healthy at all. relaxation is relaxation, and there are plenty of healthy and unhealthy ways of doing it - i just tend to prefer the latter.

[pazman]

Chen Zen, I'm definately all for 'try it out and see what happens' method, but here's some advice that might come in handy:

1) I don't know of any proof whatsoever that shows yoga nidra can replace sleep. I would highly recommend not attempting a full night's Yoga Nidra. Honestly the longest I've been able to sustain Yoga Nidra without falling asleep has been 1 hour.

2) Pranayama!!! For a good yogic sleep, practice some breathing exercises beforehand. The mind during Yoga Nidra is relaxed, yes, but aware, that's the difference. Breathing exercises prepare the mind to aware.

3) Again, don't deliberately change your sleeping schedule. Listen to your body. Since taking up Yoga, I've needed less sleep than before, but it's something that occured naturally, not something I penned in my schedule book and was determined to do.

4) I recommend practicing as needed (perhaps daily?) 10-15 minutes at a time. Yoga Nidra should be something you can come out of rather quickly and with alertness. Think of it as a power nap.

Yoga isn't all that much different from kung fu or any other activity you want to get good at: a little bit of practice everyday is much better than setting up these power sessions and then not being able to see them through. Consistancy is the key!

[Shaolin_Disciple_8]

"i not only have bad posture, but am drinking a beer or smoking a cigarette at the same time. it's not healthy at all. relaxation is relaxation"
;-) I'm glad you admit this

"chenzen, i will be interested to see what you discover, but i want you to understand also that this is not the same as a scientific test..."
Yeah yeah I know. That could work well for me and someone will need more practice but if I had good results, then you could try yourself and see. But imagine if you could get two hours more to train, you would like to try a full nigth of yoga nidra. Well, for me it would be very cool because of my short training time. And I will be more healthy also. Let's see the results before saying anything...

pazman, well yoga seems really interesting but i dont even have time for a complete wing chun practice at home. Maybe someday I'll add some yoga.

"Honestly the longest I've been able to sustain Yoga Nidra without falling asleep has been 1 hour."
Yeah, big problem here. previous night before last night i did yoga nidra for maybe 20 minutes, then last night it was 45 minutes. I don't know if I will be able to stay awake. But why does our mind want to sleep if we are already in deep sleeping practicing Yoga Nidra? For me, it seems proving our mind needs a rest too, needs to be unconscious... "Just don't kill yourself to stay awake if you feel yourself going." Why our mind goes to sleep??

Yeah, xing you're right, quite all my questions are answered.

"Good luck"
I'm glad to try for you this 4 hours of Yoga Nidra. Apparently equals to 12 hours of normal sleep. That's what we'll see. There are so much different numbers on the net. I even readed that 15 minutes of YN equals 8 hours of normal sleep :P

We also have to consider that I am a beginner to this technique... I only read a little since xing jian told me this weekend about yoga nidra on shaolinwolf. If I have good results with only 4 hours of sleeping than anybody could start also.

I'm leaving, I'll do more jumping rope and pushups ;-)

[Shaolin_Disciple_8]

Wanna know how was my night?
Well, I'll post here this afternoon because I wanna see how will be the day.

[Shaolin_Disciple_8]

Bah, I'll post the beggining and the rest this afternoon...

Yoga Nidra Experience
by Chen Zen

I planned to do 4 hours of Yoga Nidra to see the effects. Can we say that one hour of Yoga Nidra equals three hours of normal sleep? How is to practice it during a long time?, etc. Mostly, all the questions could be answered now.

-------
12:40 AM Bed time: I practiced on a gymnastic mattress which is not very soft. I had music with surround sound all the night, some cool meditation/relaxation tracks. I put a blanket under my knees and a pillow under my neck/head.

02:12 AM I wanted to see what time it was so I opened my eyes for the first time and I had to move my ass because damn after 90 minutes on this hard matress, your ass begins to hurt. I am feeling really refreshed. I wanted to go outside at practice some gong fu but that wasnt the purpose of this experience. I discovered something, well i found that during my first time of Yoga Nidra but that's another proof. It is that when you practice Yoga Nidra and you want to sleep after your practice or you want to practice again, don't move your limbs or stretch yourself. If you do so, you will feel yourself like if you had a completle sleep but it's not the case. So you'll be full of energy and you want to move. For my case, i wanted to practice gong fu. So take that as a note, dont move your limbs or stretch yourself if you wanna sleep after your practice or practice again.

02:15 AM I am not able to practice anymore. This desire of moving is too strong. I tried meditation but i wasn't in the mood for this. It was cold so i put some soxs. After, I just returned in the posture of Yoga Nidra and wait until i become tired or able to practice.

02:20 AM I think around this time i've been able to return in deep relaxation for around 40 minutes.

03:00 AM Again I am not able to practice anymore. Everything becomes disturbing. I changed the relaxation song and I did 10 minutes of Yoga Nidra but after this short time, something disturbed me. Sometimes that was my hairs, my posture, the cold, any part of body started to prick (I'm quite sure I can't use this verb here but I don't know the best one). Something will disturb me until my sleeping time ends. So I tried a lot of times to fall again in deep relaxation but I can't do more than 5-10 minutes everytimes...

04:40 AM The alarm clock rings. I put it down. I'm feeling tired, not like at 2:12. It seems it would be very easy to fall asleep.

04:45 AM I'm out of my bed. I'm feeling that i slept quite the minimum to pass the day. If I did only two hours of serious/good yoga nidra practice, it means i did only 6 hours of normal sleeping hours. Usually, I need around 8 hours of sleep. I'm having a headache but I think it's more due to too much computer time this weekend. However it's linked to having not slept enough, the recover wasn't the more successful with only 2 hours of practice.
-------

So the maximum of time I did yet practicing Yoga Nidra without stopping is 90 minutes. The problem with Yoga Nidra is not that we can fall asleep but it's that it is so boring. You can do the rotation of awareness during 30/45 minutes but after that, when only visualisations and breathing observation left, it's boring. I should meditate more during this practice because I lot of thought came to my mind. I need more practice. If you don't meditate after one or two hour, it's like being a big room without any objects, any body to talk with, just yourself... That was the case after 2:20 AM..

It's currently 7:30 AM and my eyes are closing by themselves. At 6:00 AM when I did my homework, I didn't have the best concentration. I am not energic and I don't know how it is going to be at school.

-Conclusion-
Two hours of Yoga Nidra are not enough for a good sleep. Yoga Nidra is a boring practice after two hours. I don't believe we can say one hour of Yoga Nidra equals three hours of normal sleep. It seems more one hour of YN equals two hours or one hour and a half of normal sleep. It's a deeper sleeping than normal sleep. It's also good for physical recovery. I did a lot of jumping rope at 11:00 PM and now i'm feeling my legs like they are suppose to be after a normal sleeeping time. If you are doing 8-9 hours of normal sleep and you want to remove some with Yoga Nidra I suggest you to sleep 4 hours in normal sleep and 2 hours in Yoga Nidra. More Yoga Nidra you will see is boring unless you're a master of this technique or you have a lot of practice, unlike me. Four hours of Yoga Nidra is definativly too much at my level. Yoga Nidra would be really really good but only a nap of 30 minutes during the afternoon for example.


Chen Zen, sleepy...
P.S. sorry if i didnt review this post because i dont have time now. I'm sure you will be able to understand the main ideas however.

[xing_jian108]

It seems maybe you should do as Pazman instructed. Take small steps at a time. Rather than jumping into a few hours of yoga nidra. Perhaps you should do 10 mins every night for a week and then every week after add 5 mins to it. Until you are to a point where you can last hours at this same conciousness but deep sleeping state. That is what I've been doing. Each night I do 10 mins before I let myself fall asleep. Usually it takes a while though. I do 10 mins of yoga nidra and then get up and stretch my legs. Get something to eat and then come lay down and check messages on the computer to tire myself. Because that 10 mins and then stretching has woken me up like it's midday. Anyway, I can still fall asleep later and get some hours of real sleep. I plan to keep increasing the time of yoga nidra as the weeks pass. I think this will lessen the time of real sleep I will need. And a point to get to would be never having sleep be an unconcious thing. As some people are able to do with this technique. But in order to get there it takes slow steps. So that's my plan.

A mi tuo Fo
-Xing Jian

[zachsan]

if 4 hours of yogic sleep is indeed equal to 12 hours of regular sleep, does it come into play that 12 hours of normal sleep at once isn't even healthy? people should get consistently around 8 hours... so one would think that you shouldn't practice yogic sleep (if the claims about it are even true) for more than 2 hours 40 minutes a night. and then, what if you do it for 2 hours and then fall asleep for 6 hours?

since you don't really see such things clarified it seems to me that it doesn't really matter, since YN doesn't do much more for your body than lying awake anyway. even if it were 50% more effective than regular sleep, as chen zen seems to hypothesize, such a finding would be huge for the study of sleep and the way our bodies work, and it just isn't out there.

[doc]

Was I supposed to respond to this?

[xing_jian108]

If you knew anything about Yoga Nidra and/or normal sleep...

Yes

[Shaolin_Disciple_8]

Damn, that was a hard day for me. I was quite sleeping in every classes. Please don't try what I did. So my real conclusion is:

You should do Yoga Nidra gradually increasing amounts of practice time like xing said. however, I think one hour straight is also good. I didn't have any problems for one hour and a half. That was damn benefic. But unless you practiced during months, dont try to do more than two hours. It won't be efffective. You'll be awake but not at all in a deep relaxation. What i'm planning to do is to do every nights one hour of Yoga Nidra and then normal sleep for 7 hours. In some weeks I'll add like 10 minutes every weeks. If you're good meditation practionner, then it will be more easy for you to get the perfect deep relaxation. I am only a begginer. What equals what depends on you, if you are skilled in this technique or not. I don't want to be able to do Yoga Nidra all the night. After a big training, normal sleep will be good too. However, if you get bored like I did with yoga nidra, it means you're not a good meditator. I want to increase my skill and i'm glad of getting even only one hour more of training.

Peace and sleep well.
I'm going to bed right now!