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Yoga Nidra by Swami Satyananda Saraswati is the book that gave the modern world this practice. Written at the Bihar School of Yoga in Munger and published by Yoga Publications Trust, it takes an old tantric technique — nyasa, the placing of awareness through the body — and turns it into a structured sequence any teacher can lead and any practitioner can follow. It is the reference text behind the Nidra Kriya module of our 200 Hour Yoga Teacher Training in Rishikesh.
Or be led through it
Reading a yoga nidra script and being taken through one are different experiences. The practice deepens when you are not the one holding the structure.
About the text
What is the book Yoga Nidra?
Swami Satyananda Saraswati was a disciple of Swami Sivananda and the founder of the Bihar School of Yoga. In the 1960s he did something no one had done before: he took the tantric practice of nyasa — in which awareness is placed deliberately at named points of the body, accompanied by mantra — and reworked it into a secular, teachable, repeatable sequence. He called it yoga nidra, psychic sleep. Almost every yoga nidra you will hear in a studio anywhere in the world today descends from that decision.
The book is in two halves, and they serve different readers. The first half is the theory: what happens to the brain and the nervous system in yoga nidra, the four states of consciousness, why the practice belongs to pratyahara rather than to dhyana, the historical line back to tantra, and a survey of the clinical research done on the technique. The second half is entirely practical — complete yoga nidra scripts, printed word for word, arranged from short and simple to long and subtle.
That second half is why the book has never gone out of print. A teacher can read a script aloud without modification. A practitioner alone can record one and play it back. Nothing is withheld and nothing is abridged.
What you will find inside
- The structure of a yoga nidra — preparation, sankalpa (the resolve), rotation of consciousness through the body, breath awareness, the pairing of opposite sensations, visualisation, the sankalpa again, and externalisation. Once you see the skeleton, every yoga nidra you ever practise becomes legible.
- Sankalpa — the short resolve planted at the beginning and repeated at the end, when the mind is at its most receptive. Satyananda treats this as the most important element of the practice, and most modern classes underuse it.
- The tantric origin — how nyasa became yoga nidra, and what was kept and what was set aside in the translation.
- The four states of consciousness — waking, dreaming, deep sleep and the fourth; where yoga nidra sits between them and why remaining awake at the threshold of sleep is the whole difficulty of the practice.
- Complete practice scripts — the working heart of the book. Sequences of increasing length and depth, ready to be read aloud.
- Yoga nidra and healing — the research, the claims, and a careful account of what the practice does and does not do.
In our courses
How Yoga Nidra is taught at Samadhi Yoga Ashram
Yoga nidra is not an add-on at the ashram — it has its own module in the teacher trainings and its own slot in the daily schedule. This book is the text behind all of it.
200 Hour Yoga Teacher Training
Nidra Kriya (Psychic Sleep) is a full module of our 200 Hour Yoga Teacher Training in Rishikesh — meaning and purpose, the different schools and traditions, the tantric origin, benefits and risks, the difference between yoga nidra and meditation, the four states of consciousness, three body awareness, tension relaxation, and both basic full body and inner silence yoga nidra.
100 Hour Yoga Teacher Training
The 100 Hour Yoga Teacher Training in Rishikesh carries a Yoga Nidra Relaxation module — mastering sleep through yoga nidra, mastering death through yoga nidra, and point to point yoga nidra. The shorter format, the same lineage.
200 Hour Ayurveda Yoga Teacher Training
Nidra Kriya appears again in the 200 Hour Ayurveda Yoga Teacher Training, this time read alongside the ayurvedic account of rest, sleep and the doshas — a genuinely different angle on the same practice.
Kundalini Tantra & Meditation
Our 100 Hour Kundalini Tantra and Meditation course uses the subtle-body forms — subtle body awakening yoga nidra and the 31 point blue star — which return the practice closest to the tantric nyasa it came from.
A line worth sitting with
Satyananda on what yoga nidra is
"Yoga nidra is not sleep. It is a state of mind between wakefulness and dream. It is a state in which the body is completely relaxed, and the practitioner becomes systematically and increasingly aware of the inner world."
— Swami Satyananda Saraswati, Yoga Nidra
Everything difficult about the practice is contained in that distinction. Falling asleep during yoga nidra is not failure — it is simply what the body does the first several times, because it has been tired for years. The work is to stay at the threshold: body gone, awareness still there. The scripts in the second half of the book are built entirely around holding a beginner at that edge.
Frequently asked
Questions about the Yoga Nidra PDF
Is this Yoga Nidra PDF really free?
Yes. The PDF opens directly with no email and no sign-up. It is the Yoga Publications Trust edition of Swami Satyananda Saraswati's Yoga Nidra, hosted as part of the free yoga library we keep for our students and for anyone practising at home.
What does the book Yoga Nidra actually cover?
Two halves. The first is theory: what yoga nidra is, its tantric origin in the practice of nyasa, the four states of consciousness, the relationship between yoga nidra and pratyahara, and the research that has been done on the practice. The second half is practical — complete, word-for-word yoga nidra scripts of increasing depth that a teacher can read aloud or a practitioner can work through alone.
What is yoga nidra in one sentence?
Yoga nidra is a systematic method of entering complete physical, mental and emotional relaxation while remaining awake — the body sleeps, the awareness does not. It is practised lying down in shavasana, and it is a practice of pratyahara rather than a form of meditation, though it opens directly onto meditation.
Who was Swami Satyananda Saraswati?
A disciple of Swami Sivananda and the founder of the Bihar School of Yoga in Munger. He systematised yoga nidra in the 1960s, drawing it out of the tantric practice of nyasa and shaping it into the structured, teachable sequence that is now used worldwide. He is also the author of Asana Pranayama Mudra Bandha, the other Satyananda reference in our library.
Can I learn yoga nidra from the book alone?
Partly. The scripts are complete and you can follow them without a teacher, which is why the book has stayed in print for fifty years. What the book cannot give you is the experience of being led — of not having to think about what comes next. Most people find their first genuinely deep yoga nidra happens when someone else is holding the structure for them.
Do you teach yoga nidra at Samadhi Yoga Ashram?
Yes. Nidra Kriya (Psychic Sleep) is a full module in our 200 Hour Yoga Teacher Training in Rishikesh — covering the tantric origin, the four states of consciousness, three body awareness, tension relaxation, basic full body relaxation and inner silence yoga nidra. It also appears in the 100 Hour training and in our meditation retreats.
How long is a yoga nidra practice?
The scripts in the book run from roughly twenty minutes to about an hour. A beginner should start at the short end. Thirty minutes of yoga nidra is widely held in the tradition to be equivalent to a few hours of ordinary sleep — but that is the destination, not the starting point.
Practise with a teacher
Read the scripts. Then let someone read them to you.
Yoga nidra is one of the few practices that genuinely changes when you stop managing it yourself. Our 200 Hour Yoga Teacher Training in Rishikesh teaches the full Nidra Kriya module — and teaches you to lead it for others.
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