Dhru Purohit Show - A Practice to Feel Refreshed, Revived, and Refocused with Dhru Purohit

Episode Date: May 9, 2022

This episode is brought to you by Pendulum and InsideTracker. We all know how amazing meditation is for our overall health, yet so many people struggle to practice it consistently. If that’s you, I have some good news. What if I told you there was a way to unlock the powerful healing benefits of meditation without actually having to meditate? Today on The Dhru Purohit Podcast, Dhru introduces us to a unique spin on meditation that he has been into since his college days called yoga nidra, which has many benefits similar to meditation and has been easier for him to incorporate into his schedule. In this episode, we dive into:    -What is yoga nidra? -The difference between yoga nidra and meditation -The effects that yoga nidra can have on the body and mind -The best time to practice yoga nidra Also mentioned in this episode: -Try This: A Practice to Feel Refreshed, Revived, and Refocused -Light Watkins  -​​10-Minute Yoga Nidra Practice -20-Minute Yoga Nidra Practice -40-Minute Yoga Nidra Practice For more on Dhru Purohit, follow him on Instagram @dhrupurohit, Facebook @dhruxpurohit, Twitter @dhrupurohit, YouTube @dhrupurohit, and TikTok @dhru.purohit. Text Dhru at 302-200-5643 or click here.  Interested in joining Dhru’s Facebook community? Submit your request to join here. This episode is brought to you by Pendulum and InsideTracker. Pendulum is the first company to figure out how to harness the amazing benefits of Akkermansia in a probiotic capsule. To receive 20% off your first purchase of Pendulum’s Akkermansia probiotic supplement, go to Pendulumlife.com and use code DHRU20. InsideTracker provides detailed nutrition and lifestyle guidance based on your individual needs. Right now, they’re offering my podcast community 20% off. Just go to insidetracker.com/DHRU to get your discount and try it out for yourself. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi everyone, Drew Pro here. Today we're talking about a simple practice that anyone can use to feel refreshed, revived, and refocused. You know, we all know how amazing meditation is for our overall health. And by the way, today's podcast is not about meditation, but just hear me out. Yet so many people struggle to practice it consistently. Myself is guilty as charged. I've been honest about that in the past. If you can relate, I have some good news. for you. What if I told you there was a way to unlock the powerful healing benefits of meditation without actually having to meditate? Well, this practice isn't exactly like meditation, but it's similar to some of the elements of meditation. Again, I don't want to get all my meditation teachers

and friends pissed off at me. I'm not saying today's practice is meditation, but it's similar to. and for anyone that's looking to get some of those benefits that are similar in meditation, keep listening. Today, I want to introduce you to a unique spin on meditation that I've been incorporating into my routine since my college days, and it's called Yoga Nidra. Now, again, don't get me wrong. I'm still a huge fan of meditation. Shout out to my Vedic meditation teacher, Light Watkins.

I've gone through periods of my time where I've practiced it consistently, and it's It's been super useful for helping me clear out the mental clutter and stepping into a deep feeling of inner peace so I can show up strong and ready to do my best work. So there we go. Caviats aside. However, if I'm being honest, meditation hasn't been a regular practice for me lately. Rather than be myself up about it, I have tools that I can lean on for that deep feeling of relaxation and calm. And yoga nita is one of those tools. So what exactly is yoga nidra and how can we incorporate it into our schedule?

Yoga Nidra literally translates to sleep yoga. It's a short guided practice that can be done at any time of day when you're feeling stressed, anxious, unfocused, or sluggish. And you're going to understand why it's a little bit easier for those people who may be having challenges for practicing meditation consistently. The goal of Yoga Nidra is to reset your mind and your body by bringing you into a state of deep relaxation that leaves you feeling energized, refreshed, and rejuvenated, as if you just took a nice, long nap. In today's podcast, I'm introducing you to the powerful, restorative benefits of yoga nidra and answering questions about how you can set yourself up for a successful practice. I'm also giving you my tips on what I do to get the most out of my yoga nidra practice.

But before we get into that, I bet you've been wondering, what's the difference between yoga nidra and meditation? Well, with meditation, you're sitting down and awake, and you're consciously allowing your thoughts to come and go. With Yoga Nidra, and often that could be with a mantra, some traditions of meditation don't have a mantra. There's all different focuses and different ways to go about meditation. With Yogan Nidra, though, you're lying down and you're listening to often a guided soundtrack.

I got some for you in the show notes here that prompt your brain to drift between a state of sleep and consciousness. Meditation and Yoganidra both encouraged the body to enter a pair of. parasympathetic, a.k.a. rest and digest state. Where yoga nidra is a little different is that it allows the brain and the body to enter a state even deeper when it comes to relaxation that's typically only achieved during REM sleep, which is often why I feel so great after doing it. It seems that this combination of relaxation and conscious sleep has an additive effect on our well-being that's extremely positive. And don't just take my word for it. In the show notes here,

we have a bunch of studies that have looked at Yoganitra, and they've shown that Yoganidra has benefits that can lower cortisol levels, that Yoganidra reduces stress levels and stress intensity, that yoga Nidra reduces anxiety symptoms, increases dopamine levels, improve sleep quality, sleep onset, and sleep duration, that Yoganidra could help with insomnia, and also that yoga nidra can help with immune function. Seven references from five different studies

that we've included inside of the show notes. So when is the best time to practice yoga nidra? And how do you incorporate it so that you are getting the most benefits of it in your routine? I personally find that practicing yoga nidra is most helpful when I'm feeling scattered or anxious or when I hit a wall and I can't focus in my day. If you can practice yoga nidja in the moment you're feeling this way, great, amazing.

If that's not possible or you don't need it to be that, you can practice it preventively in the morning or a lot of people like to do it maybe after that sort of 3 p.m. time period in the day where they're starting to hit a wall and their focus is losing. and you can even do it at night before bed to bring the benefits mentioned above into the areas of your life when you need it the most, which is often right before sleep. It's really good for people who have an anxious mind. In my early days in my relationship with my now wife, I found that to help both of us relax at night before bed, yoga ninja was a super simple practice that we could do to get us ready for bed. My favorite personal

time to do yoga, Nidra, is when I have a long day of meetings or podcast interviews, and I need to take a mid-afternoon break to rest and reset my brain. I've been on the phone nonstop. I have a podcast. I'm talking to people. It's just a lot of stimulation in the day. That stimulation has an inertia with it. And that inertia makes it difficult to continue to be present later on in the day and see situations for what they really are sometimes. Not always, but sometimes. And so I like to give myself a little bit of break. by literally coming back to my office, either my house or my actual office, across the street, and I'll put on a yoga nidra track and I'll just lay right on the floor. I like to cover my eyes.

I roll up a little t-shirt, funny, but what works for me. I'm sure if I had a really good eye mask I like, I could do that too. I roll up a little t-shirt and I kind of crunch it up and I let it rest of my eyes. The weight of that feels really, really good. and I'll lay on the floor listening to one of the tracks below, depending on how much time I have. I'll chat about time in just a second. When I wake up and sometimes I'll fall asleep in Yoganidra, and that's okay.

Most teachers of Yoganidra say that's okay. And sometimes I'll stay awake through the whole process. But whether I stay awake or whether I fall asleep, when I end my session, Often the sessions that are either 40 minutes or an hour sometimes if I go longer, but I'll do 20 minutes. I'll do 10 and 20 minutes often. I feel like I woke up from like a three-hour nap. So if you have a hard time napping, by the way, this is a really good technique to get some of the similar benefits of napping.

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which is why I've been taking the probiotic daily ever since I got introduced to the company. Right now, if you're interested in Acrimancia, this flagship bacteria, Strain, Pendulum is offering my community 20% off your first purchase of their pendulum acrimancia probiotic supplement. All you have to do is go to their website, pendulumlife.com. That's pendulum, P-E-U-L-U-M-L-U-M-L-E-E-D-E-E-D-E-O-F-E.com and use the code Drew 20, spelled D-H-R-U-20 for 20% off your first purchase. I've experimented with every eating approach in the book. I'm talking about raw foodist, vegan, vegetarian, meat eater, you name it, I've tried it.

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With their app, you can track your progress every day, and they even have an amazing support team to help you with all your questions. Inside Tracker looks at everything from metabolic and inflammatory markers to nutrients and hormones. It even tests your cortisol levels to help you better manage stress and you have the option to see how your inner age compares to your chronological age. Inside Tracker makes their results easy to understand and provides tips on how to use food first for optimal nutrition. And now you can even connect InsideTracker to your Apple Watch to unlock deeper, more personalized insights into your health with real-time exercise, rest, heart rate and even sleep data synced with your InsideTracker plan, you can truly wear

your health right on your sleep. Right now, InsideTrackers offering my podcast community 20% off. Just go to insidetracker.com slash DHRU. That's true. InsideTracker.com slash dhru to get your 20% discount code and try it for yourself. That's InsideTracker.com backslash DHRU for 20% off. As I mentioned, I typically do yoga nidra lying down on the floor of my office, but you can do it anywhere that works for you. Generally speaking, that could be lying in your bed, lying on the couch, laying on the floor. There's something about the floor that's really nice, as long as your head has some support, where you're not fully in bed getting ready for sleep, but you're laying down and you're in a sense of relaxation. Kind of like if you've ever done a yoga class and you're doing shavasna at the end. I find that very beneficial to people.

And how long you do yoga nidra is really based on how much time availability and what you're looking for. If you set aside at least 10 to 20 minutes for your yoga nidra practice, that's enough time to start feeling some of the benefits. If you have the time and can fit in your schedule, if you feel really sort of scattered or anxious, you can do a yoga nidra session that's up to 40 minutes long. And again, I have a few links inside of the show notes here. with some tracks on YouTube that are free and don't have ads turned on them so that you're not going to get startled while you're doing your Yogi Nidra

by some crazy advertisement on YouTube. So here's how Yogi Nidra would work. And I detailed this in writing for those that want to follow along with it. I have put a newsletter together called Try This, A Practice to Feel Refreshed, Revived, and Focused. And by the way, try this is a weekly newsletter that I put out with my team.

Shout out to my co-writer Taylor. And in that newsletter, I feature evidence-based step-by-step protocols that will help you take your health to the next level. Every week we write about a different protocol. Sometimes it's about laboratory markers and what optimal ranges look like based on all my conversations with all the experts

in metabolic health and functional medicine that are out there. Sometimes it's about hydration protocols. You never know what you're going to get in a good way with the try this newsletter and if you are curious and you want to get it every single week which is where my latest content comes out on when it comes to these protocols you can go to my website drew perroit dot com d hr u p u r o hit dot com and click on the tab that says try this and you can sign up for free over there okay so in this newsletter that i have linked in the show notes and i'm going to walk you through it i have the written version of the try this protocol so the

Step one of Yoga Nidra for trying this is to pick a soundtrack, which generally corresponds with a time amount. There's plenty of Yoga Nidra soundtracks out there, some paid, some free. I've links to free ones. And you'll need to find the one that works best for you and a voice that you resonate. You know, a lot of these yoga teachers, they are, have very calming voices. And I've picked a few people whose voices I really enjoy that helped me get into that deep relaxation state and I've been using these tracks for a really long time now these aren't the same

tracks that I was using since I was in college I don't think YouTube was around at that time but they're similar to the style of voice that I like maybe you'll like them too and I've featured three tracks in the show notes one is for 10 minutes a 10 minute yoga needs your practice perfect for when you're feeling overwhelmed or scattered and only have a small chunk of time maybe between meetings or before you're about to go out or go do something, you know, to re-center and ground yourself. There's a 20-minute yoga nidra practice, perfect for when you're on a lunch break or you need a little mid-afternoon burst of energy to get through the rest of your day. This is my favorite soundtrack to listen to when I need to reset before jumping into an afternoon of back-to-back meetings that are about to come up. Or I have a big deadline and I feel like I just used a ton of my energy in the morning

for operational work and meetings and that sort of thing, but I have to do something creative. I really like to clean the slate with a yoga nita practice. And every so often, I indulge with a 40-minute yoga nidra practice, perfect for getting ready for bed. I find that that's most helpful or when you have more time available to devote. Now, I just want to say, you know,

I am in a place right now in my life. I don't have kids. I want to have kids in the future. Yasmin, I want to have kids in the future. So I get the idea, basically is what I'm saying, is that this is a luxury, to even have 10 minutes for yourself, for a lot of parents, especially parents of young children. Nonetheless, it's still there. And could you listen to the 10 minute track for 5 minutes? Absolutely.

And maybe this is a reminder that you felt so good with your meditation practice previously that you don't need Yoganidra and you just even need to bring in a 5 minute meditation or a 10 minute. meditation into your day. So yes, this is a luxury. Yes, it's not available to everybody, especially at different stages of their life. And if you're listening this far, hopefully it's been a prompt for you to incorporate any kind of routine to help you clear the slate. Because when we get so caught up in the momentum of the day, when we get so caught up in the stimulation of the day, we're less effective, we're more reactionary, we're more triggered, We're not as nice. We can't see situations for what they are.

We can't separate ourselves from the story that we've told ourselves about the situation. It's harder to look at life for what life's potential could be. And that's why I think meditation, yoga as a practice, and in this case, yoga nidra, are powerful tools. Now, here are my top tips for successful yoga nidra practice. Number one, pick a time in your day where you're least likely to be disturbed. that could look like setting some expectations with the people that are with you that in your house or in your office that you're just going to take a little break or a little nap next one find a comfortable room or spot to lie down if you have carpet on your flooring or you have a little yoga mat that you can use i like again i prefer the floor i don't want to get too comfortable in a bed type situation put some pressure on your eyes that could be an eye pillow or as i mentioned or earlier, my ghetto version of that is just a t-shirt that I roll up and I put that weight on my eyes. I find it very helpful.

I'll prop your head up with a pillow or a blanket. That's very helpful. You don't want to be uncomfortable. And if you can, this is also helpful too. Wrap a little blanket around your feet to keep yourself nice and warm. And there's something about a blanket on your feet where it feels secure and you feel like you are, I don't know what exactly it is. I do yoga nidra sometimes without a blanket of my feet and I do it with. And with a blanket on my feet, I just enter into some sort of deeper state of relaxation.

I have no idea what it is, but it works. And lastly, if you fall asleep, that's okay. If you fall asleep, that is okay. Sometimes people will actually do yoga nidra with the intention of wanting to fall asleep. I know Andrew Huberman sometimes talks about this in his podcast. And by the way, I had a couple of interviews with him on my podcast previously and just want to give a shout out to Andrew because even though I've been incorporating Yoga Nidra in my routine since my college days, which was I am turning 40 this year. So that was basically about 20 years ago. And I can remember in my college apartment feeling like really overwhelmed, having a lot of big ideas of things that I wanted to do and trying to take a lot of different classes and start a business business.

the side and trying to make sense of the world and trying to figure out how I'm going to tell my parents that I want to be an entrepreneur and that I might not want to do school or that I want to take a break from school. And in those very stressful times of managing it all, Yoga Nietzsche was a super helpful practice that kept me grounded, which is why I want to share with you. But I haven't really talked about it publicly. And it was really credit to Andrew and his work and him coming on the podcast talking about the benefits and the science around Yoga Netra.

and that he uses it regularly, that inspired me to put out today's newsletter and talk about how it's been a part of my practice. So thanks for that, Andrew. Now, some concluding thoughts here. If you're a believer in the power of meditation, but do not practice it regularly, Yogi Nidra is an incredible alternative you can use

to get similar results. It's not the same as meditation, but there is that piece of relaxation that can come in. And by the way, there's no reason you can do both, right? There's no reason you can't do both, rather. With Yogan Nidra, getting that deep relaxation and calming benefits of meditation and healing restorative benefits of a good night's sleep at the same time. It's kind of like therapy for your soul,

helping you take a pause and hit the reset button on the days when you're feeling stressed, overwhelmed, tired, or anxious. The best part, it requires minimal effort, movement, and preparation. All you need is a soundtrack that feels right for you and at least about 10 to 20 minutes of your time and you'll come back into your day, feeling more focused, more refreshed, more energized, and all around better mood. And it's easier to be present in the moment and meet life for what it is instead of these stories that cloud up our day. Stories like, I'm not good enough. Stories like I will never be successful in this project, this relationship, this idea, whatever it is that you want to do. Anything that you care about. The tendency is the human mind will project itself in the

future and live in the past and use past evidence for future projection and it'll just create stories. But rather, if you could just see yourself and others and the world for what they are and the potential that's included inside of them, you're much more likely to make progress on anything it is that you care about. And maybe Yogi Nidra could be a tool that helps you on that journey. All right, I hope you enjoyed today's podcast. Stay tuned for more on these Monday episodes where I cover some of my try this content. And by the way, sign up for free for my newsletter. Drew Perroit.com, D-H-R-U-P-U-R-O-H-I-T dot com.

Click on the tab that says try this. I'll see you next week.