How non-sleep deep rest gets me through travel days when sleep is nowhere on the schedule
Here’s the situation I keep landing in: it’s the middle of the day, I’ve walked more than my body wanted to, the heat caught up with me, and I have a few hours before the next thing on the schedule. What I need is a nap. But I’m too wired to sleep, too heightened to shut down on command, and if I force it I’ll get anxious, start ruminating and end up worse off. So I do the next best thing. NSDR. Non-sleep deep rest. It gets me as close to a nap as my body will allow, ten minutes, lying down, headphones in, and I come back functional. Here’s how I actually use it when I travel with MS, and the one strange thing my body does that nobody warned me about.
First, the strange part nobody mentions
I’ll start with what surprised me, because it’s the part you won’t find in a wellness listicle.
When I do NSDR, my spasticity sometimes acts up. As my body lets go, my legs tighten instead of loosening, like they’re arguing with the relaxation. The calmer my mind gets, the more my legs clench. The first few times, I figured I was doing it wrong.
But I wasn’t. I wrote about this for Bezzy, where a neurologist confirmed that pain and rigidity can make it harder to settle into these practices, and that we need more research before anyone claims NSDR treats spasticity directly. Here’s what I’ve found though: if I keep breathing slow and steady through the clenching instead of quitting, I finish calmer and looser than when I started. The tightening passes. I just had to learn to sit with it.
I’m putting this first because if it happens to you, I don’t want you deciding NSDR isn’t for your body. It might just be your body doing what mine does.
What NSDR actually is, quickly
If the term is new to you, here’s the short version. I wrote the full medically-reviewed breakdown over on Bezzy if you want the science.
NSDR is a short, guided practice that drops you into deep relaxation while you stay awake. You lie down, a recorded voice walks you through slow breathing and a body scan, and your nervous system shifts out of go-mode into recovery-mode. Andrew Huberman, a neuroscientist at Stanford, coined the term as a plain-language umbrella for older practices like yoga nidra. He didn’t invent the practice. He gave it a name that doesn’t ask you to be into anything spiritual, which is part of why it works for so many different people.
The part that matters for us: it lets you reach deep rest without needing sleep. When you have MS and your nights are already unreliable, a way to recover on purpose, in daylight, in ten minutes, is worth having.
Why it works for travel days
This is where NSDR earns its spot in my bag, and it’s the part my Bezzy article doesn’t cover.
Travel scrambles every rhythm your body counts on. Different bed, different time zone, different heat, a schedule stacked with the walking and standing that drains an MS body fastest. The recovery tools that work at home, my own couch, my own dark bedroom, my own timing, are gone. NSDR comes with me. It needs my phone and a place to lie down.
On planes, I run a session somewhere over the middle of the flight, before fatigue turns into a flare. In a new place, I use it to reset between a heavy morning and an evening I need to show up for right after. In the middle of a city day, when the heat has caught up with me and I can feel the crash coming, I find a bench or head back to the room for ten minutes and zone out in active relaxation.
That’s the whole strategy though: I use it before I’m empty on energy, not after I crash. Waiting until you’ve already run out of spoons is the mistake. NSDR works as a bridge across the gap, not a rescue after you’ve fallen in. It’s the same principle behind how I pace a whole trip.
What the research actually says
You might be wondering whether this is real or just a wellness trend – and I love that you’re asking those questions – here’s the honest state of the science:
The evidence is young, and it’s pointing somewhere good. In a 2022 study of over 300 people, just 11 minutes of yoga nidra a day, the practice NSDR is built on, made people sleep better and feel less wiped out during the day. A follow-up study in 2025 found that regular practice actually lowered cortisol, which is the chemical your body pumps out when you’re stressed. Now, does any of this fix the nerve damage underneath MS fatigue? No. Anyone promising you that is lying. What it does is give you a free, low-effort way to recover a little energy without spending more of it, and when your energy is on a strict budget, that’s the whole point.
My actual travel routine, step by step
No theory, just what I do.
I save a few sessions on my phone before I leave, downloaded, so I’m not relying on hotel wifi or a signal I might not have. Ten minutes is my standard. Twenty on the truly depleted days.
I lie down wherever I can, a bed, a couch, a reclined plane seat, headphones in. The headphones do more than you’d expect. They pull you in and shut out the strange new room, which is half the work in an unfamiliar place.
I keep a couple of different guide voices saved, because the voice makes or breaks the session, and the one that works at home might grate on you on a hard day.
One tool I need to share, because it totally changed my travel routine: I use a Bluetooth sleep mask that plays audio through the mask itself, no earbuds pressing into my head when I’m lying down. It blocks light completely, which matters in unfamiliar rooms, hotel curtains that don’t close all the way, red-eye flights, or a stranger’s guest room during a house sit. I load my NSDR sessions into it, lie back, and the whole reset gets easier. It’s the closest I’ve gotten to a proper dark, quiet room I can carry in my bag.
And I’ve stopped needing it to go a certain way. Sometimes I fall asleep. Sometimes my legs clench the whole time. Either way I come out more rested than I went in, so I quit grading myself on it.
Where to find sessions: search NSDR or yoga nidra on YouTube or Spotify. There are hundreds, most of them free. Try a few until a voice fits, then download the ones you vibe with before your trip.
The Short & Sweet
NSDR gives you deep rest without sleep, which makes it one of the best recovery tools I have for traveling with MS. It needs your phone and ten minutes, it works on planes and in unfamiliar rooms and in the middle of a hard city day, and it works best as a bridge you cross before the crash, not a rescue after. If your body tightens as you relax, that can be normal. Breathe through it. I put the full medically-reviewed science over on Bezzy if you want it.
Mostly, it’s this: traveling with MS scrambles your body’s rhythms the second you leave home, and one reliable reset you can do anywhere changes what’s possible. You don’t have to earn the rest. You lie down and press play.
status quo → go 🧡
Do you use any relaxation tools too? Tell me what gets you through a hard day, I’m always hunting for a good ones to add to my MS toolbox.
Social description: Non-sleep deep rest is free, portable, and the best recovery tool I have on the road with MS. Here’s how I use it, plus the spasticity surprise nobody mentions.
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