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Meditation sometimes produces a sleep-like state, like you described, but the physiological parameters are different. The metabolism goes much lower than in sleep. Heart rate and breathing are much slower than in sleep, nearly stopped. The body and mind come to a state of complete silence, while still awake inside. The level of rest in the body and mind in meditation is deeper than sleep. It is a different kind of rest that removes impurities; obstructions to consciousness that sleep cannot reach.

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Sometimes movements point to "automatic yoga" positions. For example,
if you feel compelled to go down to the mat with your head and torso
while sitting, this is the sushumna (spinal nerve) wanting to stretch
itself for more purification. If you do some maha mudra as part of
your asanas before pranayama and meditation it can help pre-empt the
tendency during sitting practices. The basic version of this is a
sitting toe grab with legs out straight and head toward knees with
chin toward chest. Or, if your head and torso irresistibly want to go
down during sitting practices, then let them for a few minutes. Or
you can let yourself go into it for as long as necessary at the end
of your sitting practices. It is a natural expression of the
connectedness of yoga through your nervous system.

Obviously, we don't want to interrupt our sitting practices too much
with spontaneous yoga positions, but sometimes these things happen,
so we let them if the urge gets to be strong enough. The best way to
minimize movements in pranayama and meditation is with a good set of
asanas before we start. And, if the movements become too much, we do
as we always do when symptoms of purification become excessive. We
use self-pacing in our practices and back off for a while until we
find stability in our routine, and continue from there. When we hit a
few pot-holes in the road, we slow down until the road smoothes out
again.

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