Sunday reset - spring series
As a physiotherapist, I've spent 15 years working with people whose bodies are holding more than they realise.
Chronic pain that doesn't respond to treatment. Fatigue that sleep doesn't fix. Immune systems that keep failing. Nervous systems are stuck in a low-grade chronic stress.
We treat the symptoms. But rarely do we treat the state the body is living in. The patient has normalised it and doesn’t even notice it.
The truth is, most people in our Western always-on society do not know how to rest. I didn't. We are information-overloaded, overworked, and when we finally stop the mind keeps racing, ruminating, replaying. Rest becomes another thing we can't quite get right.
This is why I started integrating Yoga Nidra into my clinical practice and why the emerging neuroscience behind it matters to every healthcare professional, not just those working in wellness (Western medicine needs science to make people listen).
In 2024, researchers at IIT Delhi and AIIMS Delhi published the first brain imaging study of Yoga Nidra in. Using fMRI scanning, they found that the Default Mode Network, the area of the brain responsible for ruminating negative thoughts, becomes significantly less active during the practice. The more accumulated practice a person had, the more pronounced the biological effect in the brain.
Even first-time practitioners - people who never practiced meditation before - showed meaningful activity in the brain regions responsible for emotional processing and sleep regulation from their very first session.
How does this matter in the clinical setting? Because a dysregulated nervous system is not a mental health problem in isolation, it shows up as chronic inflammation, poor immune function, disrupted sleep, hormonal imbalance, and slow tissue repair. All things we see every day in physiotherapy. And this low-grade chronic stress, that we do not notice within ourselves and in our patients, is now scientifically linked to long-term illnesses and auto-immmune diseases.
In my clinical opinion Yoga Nidra is not a ‘wellness fad’ or an ‘alternative therapy’, it is an evidence-informed tool for creating the biological conditions in which deep healing becomes possible.
Rest is not passive nor do we need to earn it. It is medicine and it is time we start prescribing it.
I'm currently running Sunday Reset - a weekly online breathwork and Yoga Nidra series for people who need their nervous system supported. If you work with patients or clients (or for yourself!) who are carrying chronic stress, fatigue, or burnout - I would love to connect.
Sign up here -> https://forms.gle/prnhejMsYYxT2364A
Or email me to connect
#Physiotherapy #YogaNidra #NervousSystemHealth #EvidenceBasedPractice #HolisticHealth #Breathwork #ClinicalWellness
