Yoga Nidra is a profoundly healing, transformative practice in which we experience deep relaxation on every level of our being.
Yoga Nidra is loosely translated as yogic sleep. However, the yogi’s definition of sleep is different.
Ordinary sleep occurs when we are unconscious. It doesn’t necessarily relax the body if you just consider how many people grind their teeth at night, or toss and turn endlessly.
However there is a fleeting moment just prior to falling asleep (and again just prior to waking) when the brain moves thru alpha waves. For these short moments the body does indeed become totally and completely relaxed, in fact we feel serenely paralyzed. If we remained conscious during these few moments (and we’re usually not) it might be experienced as ‘bliss’.
Yoga Nidra seeks to recreate this blissful state and keep you consciously aware at the same time. You are neither asleep or awake….a paradoxical state that balances our deepest self.
During yoga nidra long held tensions (in the body and the mind) are released. Samskara’s dissipate. Creativity is enhanced, vitality is stimulated, and the ability to manifest our highest potential becomes possible. Time stops with alpha waves and this in itself allows the body to release unrecognized tension. In fact, one hour of Yoga Nidra is more beneficial than four hours of regular sleep.
Research shows that yoga nidra, used as a therapeutic technique,can bring about significant changes with psychological disorders like depression, anxiety, hostility, insomnia etc, psychosomatic diseases, as well as: asthma, coronary heart disease, cancer, hypertension, ptsd, etc.
In our present modern lifestyle, where mental health problems are on the rise, the technique of yoga nidra serves as a safe and easy practice to promote health and wellness for all.
For those on a spiritual path, read more here. yoga nidra helps us to release karmic residue. The yogi’s believe that our unconscious minds hold all of the unresolved patterns from past lives. These patterns affect our self-concepts, personal biases & belief systems creating a distorted view of ‘who we really are’. When the physical, energy, mental & emotional bodies are in synergy then a state of wholeness or unity is created bringing an expanded sense of self. Yoga Nidra can create a paradigm shift by bypassing the linear, logical approach thereby becoming a powerful tool to eliminate karmic stress along with unconscious fears, beliefs and habits.
Information on how to best prepare for a yoga nidra workshop is here.
Yoga Nidra & Trauma
The effects of accumulated stress on the human body are something that endangers all of us today. We are drowning in cortisol and adrenaline.
YOGA NIDRA & Spiritual Development
For those on a spiritual path, yoga nidra helps us to release karmic residue. The yogi’s believe that our unconscious minds hold all of the unresolved patterns from past lives. These patterns affect our self-concepts, personal biases & belief systems creating a distorted view of ‘who we really are’. When the physical, energy, mental & emotional bodies are in synergy then a state of wholeness or unity is created bringing an expanded sense of self. Yoga Nidra can create a paradigm shift by bypassing the linear, logical approach thereby becoming a powerful tool to eliminate karmic stress along with unconscious fears, beliefs and habits.
My first experience with yoga nidra…..
Early 90’s, Omega Institute, Rhinebeck NY …first time away for a *me* weekend as a divorced Mom, before yoga transformed me. I had never beento a place like this before. It was a candyland of everything I craved. I wandered and wondered about how and why I felt so good here.
I remember walking into an empty room with about 100 people. They sat on the hardwood floor and listened to the teacher. I learned later that he was the Sufi leader for the Omega community. New to this kind of campus, I wasn’t sure this was where I was supposed to be. But curiosity won and I sat down too. He didn’t say much before he instructed us to simply lie down and listen to him. That was it. I don’t know exactly how much time passed before I heard his instruction to sit back up, which was more challenging than one would expect.
It doesn’t read like much but that experience changed me in ways that has taken 30 years to understand.
Altered states of consciousness are amazing experiences, especially when they occur naturally, simply by using your own body/mind/breath.
After my initial 200 hrs of yoga teacher training I was eager to dive in deeper and enrolled in Integrative Yoga Therapy with Joseph LaPage at Kripalu Center. It was 1999-2000. Over the course of the two -week intensive portion we spent a few sessions learning/practicing/teaching yoga nidra. Immediately I recognized the value of this practice for myself and for everyone .
Although I had no intention of becoming a yoga teacher/therapist at that time I was required to offer a 6-week course of study out in the public. It was at that time that I began to offer yoga nidra as a ‘specialty’ class and things happened after that. For more than 10 years I offered monthly Yoga Nidra Workshops and the room was always full.
Over the course of my training and teaching I have had a few significant teachers of this amazing practice, Amrit Desai, Richard Miller, & Joseph LaPage to name a few.
