How to do "non-sleep deep rest" like the Google CEO

What if there was a simple technique to replace sleep that we have lost the previous night, restore our ability to focus deeply, and destress simultaneously?

As it turns out, there is. That technique is NSDR, which is short for "non-sleep deep rest". It comes in three variants, one being the favorite of Google CEO Sundar Pichai. This variant is called Yoga Nidra, or yogic sleep.

Unlike traditional Yoga, Yoga Nidra doesn't involve movement. You can do it either seated or lying down, which makes it easy to integrate into a busy day. All you need to do is find a quiet place and listen to a script.

In essence, Yoga Nidra takes you into deep relaxation by both exhale-emphasized breathing and a body scan. Professor Andrew Huberman of Stanford University, who coined the term NSDR, offers this script on YouTube. It takes 10 minutes and features the essentials of Yoga Nidra – without the language typically associated with Yoga. 

Although I was very skeptical initially, Yoga Nidra became a game changer for my mental energy and focus throughout the day. Used interchangeably with the two other variants of NSDR that I'll describe in the next two weeks, Yoga Nidra is one of my go-to practices whenever I feel more tired than I'd like, both in the morning and afternoon.

In the morning, Yoga Nidra works amazingly well whenever I feel tired after waking up. Instead of hitting the snooze button – which makes waking up even harder without leaving us any more rested – getting out of bed and listening to the MadeFor script for some 20 minutes reliably gives me a much better start to the day. Today was one of these mornings, by the way.

In the afternoon, Yoga Nidra is one of the best ways I know to cope with the natural dip in mental energy that most of us experience during that time of the day. Like 20 to 30 minutes of physical activity, I found it to be a much, much better solution than working through the "afternoon trough" – which only prolongs our being in a state of low mental energy.

In a nutshell, Yoga Nidra is a simple and excellent technique to do whenever you feel tired or exhausted. It gives you a fresh start to both the first and the last part of the day. And from my own experience, you'll surely recoup those 20 minutes in gained productivity many times over. So the next time you feel more tired than you'd like during the day, try it out here.

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Until next week,
Christian