Why Google's CEO uses "non-sleep deep rest" instead of meditation

In one way, Google's CEO Sundar Pichai is like most of us. He finds it difficult to do traditional meditation.

He recently told the Wall Street Journal that he instead uses a lesser-known practice to relax: "non-sleep deep rest", or NSDR. In a podcast interview, professor Andrew Huberman of Stanford University explains why:

"The CEO of Google is an avid practitioner of NSDR because it has this amazing ability to reset your energy levels and focus. Whereas with meditation, many people find it hard. And part of the reason they find it hard is that it requires focus.”

Having coined the term, Huberman knows a thing or two about NSDR. The problem with most forms of meditation, he argues, is that it feels quite effortful: trying to focus on your breath or seeing through your thoughts, after all, is hard work.

The reason is that – similar to focus work – many forms of meditation require that we need our prefrontal cortex to suppress our limbic system's instinctive urges to distract ourselves or quit. And since this top-down control consumes a lot of mental energy, these forms of meditation often leave us more exhausted than before.

NSDR is different. It resembles sleep in many ways and – unlike most other meditative practices – enables us to self-induce a state of calm effortlessly. As it turns out, NSDR is also quite versatile: During the day, it helps us deal with stress and cope with a bad night's sleep. And at night, it helps us fall (back) asleep.

There are three variants of NSDR. The first is "Yoga Nidra", Sundar Pichai's favorite. Also called yogic sleep, it puts us into a state between being awake and falling asleep. Unlike traditional yoga, it doesn't involve movement but merely listening to a script, making it easy to integrate into a busy day. It's also both short and effective: Researchers found that an 11-minute session led to lower stress, higher well-being, and improved sleep quality.

The second variant is self-hypnosis. While stage hypnosis usually involves a hypnotist making us do things we wouldn't normally do, self-hypnosis is about getting our brain into a state we want. Huberman compares that state to a telephoto lens: "You're eliminating the surround. So it's a state of high focus, which normally would be associated with a high degree of excitement or stress. But hypnosis is a unique state, because you have a high degree of focus, but you're very relaxed." Conveniently, all we need to do for self-hypnosis is listen to a script.

The third variant is brief naps. Similar to Yoga Nidra and self-hypnosis, we rarely drop into deep states of sleep during a nap. And like sleep, naps improve our mental energy and productivity: According to research by NASA, brief naps improve alertness by 54% and job-related performance by 34%. That's why, done at the right duration and time, naps provide one of the best ways to cope with low-energy points during the day – including the natural slump that most of us experience in the afternoon.

Over the following weeks, I'll delve deeper into each of the three variants. Until then, I have a little favor to ask:

Please share this post with one person who might enjoy learning about the best alternatives to traditional meditation.

Until next week,
Christian