Having trouble sleeping? If you haven’t tried meditation, my recommendation is you should! For most people, yoga nidra is the easiest entry point because you don’t have to figure anything out. But a good body scan or a mantra meditation works just as well.
Three meditation techniques are particularly well-suited for sleep: yoga nidra, body scan, and mantra meditation. They work differently and suit different situations, but all three share the same basic mechanism: moving attention away from thought and into the body or a neutral anchor. This is to get the nervous system to settle – to fall asleep faster and sleep better.
Yoga Nidra
Use it when: you want to fully hand the reins over. Long day, overstimulated, can’t be bothered to do anything… Also works well for people who struggle with sleep onset, rather than staying asleep.
Yoga nidra is the most passive of the three. You lie down, close your eyes, and follow a guide. The structure rotates your attention through body parts in a specific sequence, then moves through sensory recall, opposites (heavy/light, warm/cold), and visualization. The goal isn’t exactly sleep, it’s a state called hypnagogia, the threshold between waking and sleeping.
You’re not trying to do anything. You’re just staying awake enough to follow the voice. Most people fall asleep anyway, especially at first, and that’s fine.
Body Scan
Use it when: you’re lying in bed with a busy mind and need something to anchor to. It works well mid-night too, if you wake up and can’t get back to sleep. You can do it without any app or audio, but it’s usually easier with a guide.
Body scan is more active than yoga nidra, you’re directing your own attention and move systematically from feet to head (or head to feet), noticing sensations in each area without trying to change them. No visualization, no narrative. Just noticing. It’s a bit more demanding cognitively, which is actually useful if your mind tends to wander and needs something concrete to do. Often when we can’t fall asleep it’s because we think about stuff that creates stress in the body. So by redirecting our thoughts we create space for relaxation and a calm mind.
Mantra Meditation
Use it when: you need to decompress before going to bed, like on the couch, after work, as a transition. Also useful if lying-down practices make you too anxious about falling asleep.
Mantra meditation is the outlier here, it’s not specifically a sleep technique, but it’s excellent for winding down because a repeated mantra creates a kind of mental white noise. You silently repeat a word or phrase. Traditional options include: So-Hum, Om, or just something neutral like one or release. When thoughts pull you away, you return to the mantra.
It’s closer to the TM tradition, and the research on it shows it drops your nervous system into a rest state similar to sleep even if you stay awake.
Make It Even Easier With Breathwork
If you find that your mind is still busy when you start meditating, try 5 to 10 minutes of breathwork first. I find it helps me slow down. Research shows it activates the parasympathetic nervous system, the same system responsible for rest and recovery. Doing this before meditation means you’re not spending the first half of your session just trying to settle down.
4-7-8 breathing (inhale for 4 counts, hold for 7, exhale for 8) and coherent breathing (inhale and exhale evenly at around 5.5 seconds) are both well-suited as a pre-sleep primer. And they are both available for free in my app.
Either one slows your heart rate, reduces cortisol, and makes it noticeably easier to stay with a meditation technique rather than chasing thoughts. You don’t need to do both. Pick one, run through a few cycles, then move into whichever meditation technique fits the night.
