By Captain Rich Marsh and Kamini Desai, PhD
When I first got hired in 2008, I was a chronic napper. As soon as I got home from the firehouse, I would sleep. I struggled to find a sleep pattern. Eventually, I resigned myself to staying awake when I got off work, stumbling through my 72 hours off, underslept.
Being underslept is a chronic condition where you adapt to getting fewer than seven hours of sleep per night. Many people claim they can function with little sleep, but the truth is you are severely cognitively impacted – you just don’t see it due to your own impairment from being underslept. The seesaw of inconsistent sleep often meant I was going back to work in a fog. I wasn’t alone in this struggle.
Sleep is a huge topic in the fire service – one that requires significant attention that goes far beyond the scope of this article. (If you are interested in learning more about it, I highly recommend, “Why We Sleep” by Dr. Matthew Walker.) For now, I’ll share the tool that helped me manage my sleep troubles – the practice of yoga nidra or non-sleep deep relaxation (NSDR).
[Read next: ‘Why We Sleep’: The book every firefighter needs to read by Dr. Sara Jahnke]
Introducing yoga nidra
Mindfulness techniques are known to reduce stress and anxiety and to trigger a relaxation response within the body. Yoga nidra, also known as yogic sleep, is a guided mindfulness practice typically performed while laying down to encourage rest or sleep.
Mindfulness techniques focused on body, breath and awareness are structured to progressively guide an individual into alpha and theta brainwave states of deep relaxation and restoration. Alpha brain waves keep you calmer throughout the day. They are the ideal state for learning new things, and they help us transition from being awake to falling asleep. Theta brainwaves gradually replace alpha waves during the transition into deeper sleep. Theta waves are associated with resolution of unprocessed experiences, emotions and unconscious problem-solving. This is also how your brain stores and consolidates memories. Your brain cannot enter a theta wave state without first entering alpha.
Friends introduced me to the practice, and everything changed. In addition to having more energy and feeling awake, I was also able to deal with the stress of my personal life and the job without feeling overwhelmed. Yoga nidra became my go-to tool after afternoon training to give me a mental and physical reset for the next 16 hours. I also found it to be invaluable whenever I had a rough night, practicing as soon as I got home.
How to practice yoga nidra
Yoga nidra is an easy-to-follow protocol that you can do lying down, eyes closed, in the firehouse. A typical yoga nidra meditation will follow these steps:
- Come into a comfortable position, ideally laying down (a comfortable seated position will also suffice).
- Close your eyes.
- Focus your attention on relaxing your body.
- Inhale and exhale deeply.
- Tighten and release various muscle groups.
Follow the guided meditation to encourage intentional relaxation. There are many online, but I use the following meditation, as it was designed for use in the firehouse to get focused and ready for the second half of my shift.
Listen to the first Yoga Nidra:
Here’s my approach: After 4 p.m., when training is complete, I find somewhere quiet, put on one earphone and listen to the recording. I keep my radio on and near, but I am entirely focused on the instructions. No matter how tired I am, my mind will wander, but more than anything, the nidra recording settles me and prepares for the second half of my shift.
In the morning, especially after a long night, I need to decompress and be ready for my home life. So, as soon as I get home, I put on my earphones, close my eyes and listen to the following nidra recording.
Listen to the second Yoga Nidra for firefighters:
The important thing is to listen even if it’s in the car, sitting in your driveway. Having that reset will give your personal life the space it needs to grow. I also listen to this recording the morning before my next shift to get mentally prepared to return to work.
Job stress: Yoga nidra tested
This type of meditation is also essential in building resilience. We see more tragedy in a handful of shifts than most people do in their entire lives. Sharing these experiences with our loved ones is often frustrating and, worse yet, could alienate or even traumatize them. As a result, we tend to bottle up our difficult experiences, swallow pain and push through. This approach works for a while, but we are only human, and eventually, our minds call an audible. This happened to me after a particularly difficult response.
In addition to being a fire captain, I am also a member of New Jersey Task Force 1 (NJTF1). In 2022, I responded to the Surfside building collapse in Florida. I was not mentally prepared for the magnitude of that job and what was needed to overcome that experience. The smell of death was a constant. It wasn’t only on the rubble pile; it clung to you, your clothes and everyone around you. There was no way to escape it, and the work went on for 15 days. At the time, I kept my head down, did my job and gave little thought to what I was experiencing. I think the best way to describe it was being numb to everything except the task at hand. I was mentally exhausted and physically depleted.
Once the mission was over, I no longer had adrenaline driving me, I was physically exhausted from the chronic lack of sleep and the actual labor involved. When I finally started to unpack the effect of the experience, I leaned heavily on yoga nidra. The practice helped me speed the recovery time by allowing my subconscious to process everything I had witnessed. I was able to transition back to normal life with minimal downtime.
Final thoughts
While yoga nidra is ideal for any time you have not slept well or had to cut sleep short for any number of reasons, it is also a powerful tool to help first responders navigate challenging calls, as sleep is shown to help us process painful experiences. On a personal level, yoga nidra has given me back my piece of mind and exponentially increased my ability to cope with stress. It is my hope that you will find value in the practice, and share it with your fellow firefighters – and any friends and loved ones – who could benefit from its focus on restorative health.
Note: The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of the Hoboken Fire Department.
About the authors
Captain Rich Marsh is a member of the Hoboken Fire Department with 17 years of experience. He is also a member of New Jersey Task Force 1 (NJ-TF1) for which he has served as a technical search specialist since 2013.
Kamini Desai, PhD, is the author of “Yoga Nidra: The Art of Transformational Sleep.”