Just relax!' So easy to say, so hard to do...without a little help. And that's exactly what Yoga Nidra can do. It can help you to relax, help you to sleep and help you to reduce stress. It can help you be calm in a frantic world. It can help you find more energy for all the things you need to do...and want to do.

So what is Yoga Nidra?

Yoga Nidra is a special kind of yoga that focuses solely on relaxation - specifically 'guided relaxation'. If you have attended yoga classes, you may have experienced something a little like it if your teacher has asked you to lie down and to listen to their voice while they talk you through visualisations for example. Although this doesn't take you as 'deep' as yoga nidra, for many, it is still the highlight of their yoga session - guided relaxation is a wonderful, calming experience. Whether you are highly stressed or not, yoga nidra can make a huge difference to your life, helping you make the most of every day.

However, there are some people for whom yoga nidra can be particularly powerful: that is people who suffer from high stress or who have problems sleeping. Sleep and stress are inextricably linked. The more we are stressed, the harder it is to sleep. The less well we sleep, the harder we find it to manage stress. It's a vicious cycle that many find hard to break.

If you take less than five minutes to go to sleep at night, then you are almost certainly not getting enough sleep. A ‘normal' sleep pattern would see you taking between ten and fifteen minutes and being over tired as a result of poor sleep has been associated with anything from increased road accidents to the Challenger space shuttle disaster. All sorts of factors can lead to poor sleep from what you eat in the last hour or two before bed to the noise and temperature levels around you. Even if you don't actually wake up, research has shown that noise, particularly just after you've fallen asleep and in the hour or two before you wake can affect you. And research has also found that the temperature range within which we can sleep comfortably gets narrower as we get older. When we're younger it can be anywhere between 18 and 30 degrees, but as we age it can reduce to as little as 23-25 degrees.

And the symptoms of not getting enough sleep are all too familiar to many people – you feel low on energy, less alert, sometimes moody and your physical and mental abilities are reduced. Indeed, some studies have made direct comparisons between the loss of ability caused by sleep deprivation, and the loss caused by drinking alcohol.

But Yoga Nidra can help. Yoga Nidra is used by many of the founder of Yoga for the Mind's students as a means to not only relax, but quite literally to 'send them to sleep'.

One of them said recently; "You have changed my life. For the first time since my second child was born I have found a way to sleep when I want to. And having slept, I am dealing so much better with the childrens' asthma, schools ...everything! Thank you so much. You're a life saver!"

Making the Yoga for the Mind yoga nidra available on cd or as an mp3 download has made it possible for more students to enjoy the benefits at home as well as when they are in class. In fact, as your name can be recorded into the audio of the yoga-nidra, it really is like having a private class at home.