I'm trying to get into calmer states prior to sleep and some ways to do that. I'm a big fan, and I've talked a lot before on this podcast about things like yoga nidra, which is a non-movement-based practice, sometimes called non-sleep-deep rest, where people actually take some time each day to practice how to go into a more parasympathetic, a.k.a.

relaxed state deliberately, because it's a bit of a skill. Yeah. Yeah. There's some good data, really, mostly out of a laboratory in Scandinavia, showing huge increases in nigrostriatal dopamine when people basically engage in a practice of deliberate non-movement and that the brain actually enters states of very shallow sleep, so sort of nap-ish, but the idea is to actually stay awake but motionless, and it does seem to restore a certain number of features of neurochemistry, but perhaps more importantly, it teaches people to relax, which is something that most people are not very good at, but in any event, and people who listen to this podcast have heard me say this over and over again, so I sound like a broken record, but this practice, as a zero-cost practice that doesn't require any pharmacology, does seem to really enhance people's ability to fall asleep more quickly and to fall back asleep if they wake up in the middle of the night, so in any event, another plug for NSDR, yoga nidra.

Well, I just also want to add to that. That's one of the reasons why insomnia is so insidious, is because when people feel like they haven't gotten enough sleep and aren't getting enough sleep, then they become anxious about getting enough sleep, and then you're anxious before going to sleep, like I'm not going to fall asleep, it's going to be 45 minutes in, and then that's a positive feedback loop, so you need to break that loop, say, "Okay, my body's going to get as much sleep as it needs.

I needn't worry about it," and then practice this relaxation to say, "Hey, it's all okay. It's going to be all right," and then concentrate on things that relax you, whether it's concentrating or not concentrating, whatever it is. You mentioned yoga nidra, and that reminded me of transcendental meditation, which is something that also hasn't been studied well, largely because we can't ask non-human animals to do it, and so we don't know what's happening with our neurochemistry and our brain activity.

It's in a deep and meaningful way, but one thing that has been shown and those that can do it really well is that that theta activity that I said happens when you're learning something or when you're in REM sleep, it's well-established and increases during the transcendental meditation, so it might be that some states of meditation could in some ways replace or mimic some functions of, for example, REM sleep.

But again, we don't know if all the neurochemistry is right to do, for example, the thing that I was talking about, which is erasing the novelty encoding structures of the brain. That needs an absence of norepinephrine and serotonin, which we don't know if that goes away with transcendental meditation.

We just don't know the answer to that yet. Yeah. The studies on yoga nidra and sleep replacement are kind of interesting. It does seem to be the case that nothing can really replace sleep except sleep, but that if one is sleep-deprived or is having trouble falling back asleep, that these things like – and I hear it's – I acknowledge this is essentially like yoga nidra, but we now call it non-sleep deep rest or NSDR because oftentimes names like yoga nidra act as a kind of a barrier for what would otherwise be people willing to try a practice.

It sounds mystical. Meditation and yoga, yeah. It sounds like flying carpets and – it sounds like you have to go to Esalen. By the way, Esalen's a beautiful place, but it sounds like you have to go there or live in the West Coast to believe in this stuff, but it's simply not the case.

These are practices that are really just self-directed relaxation as a practice that allows people to get better and better at directing their brain states towards more relaxation. Most people have an asymmetry. For instance, most people can force themselves to stay up later, but they have a hard time going to sleep earlier, and that just speaks to the asymmetry that's probably adaptive and survival-based that we can ramp ourselves up far more easily than we can tend to calm ourselves down.

Yeah, yeah. Actually, to appeal to other Christians like me, prayer can be a wonderful way to calm yourself down because through prayer, you're giving your cares to God and saying – and then you are relaxed, more relaxed. And I just want to say that because the same reason that yoga might put some people off, it might put some people off to talk about prayer, but it's the same process of being able to relax and – yeah.

And get outside our own experience a little bit. Get outside our own experience, yeah. Back out, get a worldview that might actually also help us to relax. Well, you might be surprised at how many clinicians and scientists who've come on this podcast have mentioned things like prayer from various perspectives, Christianity, Judaism, Muslim traditions, and others, that as a parallel to all of these things.

And I think what it speaks to is the fact that ultimately the biological architectures that we're all contending with are going to be identical, right? And so different ways to tap into them and ones that are congruent with people's beliefs, I think, are great. Because anything non-congruent with your beliefs is also stressful.

And feels forced. And that's why this idea of calling it non-sleep deep rest in addition to yoga nidra was not to detract from the naming or the history around yoga nidra, but I was finding that it was a barrier. Likewise, yoga nidra tends to include things like intentions, whereas NSDR scripts – and by the way, we will provide links to some NSDR and yoga nidra scripts, but NSDR has no intentions.

It's simply a body scan deep relaxation base. So it's sort of the scientific version of all of this stuff, and actually we study it in the laboratory and some of the brain states that people go into, but that's a discussion for another time. Well, another thing – this is hard now.

My mother used to tell me when I would complain, "I can't go to sleep," she'd say, "Well, you know, start with your toes and relax." So you would clench your muscles around your toes and relax them and do that all the way from your toes all the way to your head.

And I don't know where she got this. It might have been her own common sense, or she might have gotten it from this NPR show that's called The Mind Can Keep You Well, she used to listen to. But that's another intentional relaxation that focuses on the body rather than on your own mental processes.

I do a little bit of work with the military, and there's a method within certain communities of special operations in the U.S. military where if they can't sleep or they're having challenges sleeping, they will deliberately try and relax their facial muscles in particular, like sort of drape the facial muscles and use long or exhale-emphasized breathing does seem to increase the probability of transitioning back into sleep.

And those are hallmarks of yoga nidra, non-sleep deep rest, body scans. And so I think all of these things converge on a common theme. You know, as neurobiologists, we can say all of the things that we're describing certainly move the needle away from locus coeruleus activation. I mean, we haven't done the experiment to really look at that, but it seems all these things are counter to noradrenaline release.

- Right. Another one is yawning. Yawning in itself is that kind of sort of tensing of all the muscles in your face and then relaxing them. So it might be why we yawn. We don't know why we yawn yet, but it might also be really great. The animals yawn too, you know.

- My bulldog was a perpetual, if he wasn't sleeping, he was yawning. - And it would be interesting to see what yawning does to the locus coeruleus. Does that also come and switch locus coeruleus activity? Because it's interesting that facial nerve, like trigeminal nerve, you know, through the vagus connects indirectly to the locus coeruleus and has powerful effect on that.