The 20-minute activity to do before bedtime can improve your sleep and memory

Just 20 minutes of yoga can lead to better sleep and improved memory, according to new research. Practising yoga nidra — a kind of mindfulness training — might improve sleep, cognition, learning, and memory – even in beginners, say scientists. Unlike more active forms of yoga, which focus on physical postures, breathing, and muscle control, yoga nidra guides people into a state of conscious relaxation while they are lying down.

After two weeks of yoga nidra, the researchers from the Armed Forces Medical College in India observed that participants exhibited a significantly increased sleep efficiency and percentage of delta-waves in deep sleep. They also saw faster responses in all cognitive tests with no loss in accuracy and faster and more accurate responses in tasks including tests of working memory, abstraction, fear and anger recognition, and spatial learning and memory tasks. To get their results, published in PLOS ONE, the team took measurements from a group of novice practitioners before and after two weeks of yoga nidra practice.

This practice was carried out during the daytime using a 20-minute audio recording. The findings support previous studies which link delta-wave sleep to improved sleep quality as well as better attention and memory. Professor Karuna Datta said: “Yoga nidra is a low-cost and highly accessible activity from which many people might therefore benefit.

Yoga nidra practice improves sleep and makes brain processing faster.

Accuracy also increased, especially with learning and memory-related tasks.”