What Is Yoga Nidra and Why Practice It?
Yoga Nidra is the yoga of sleep. It’s goal is samadhi, experiencing yourself as Oneness and achieves this through a method of entering the Nidra mind state, the in-between state of waking and dreaming, through systematized relaxation and layered Awareness. I offer online Yoga Nidra trainings to help people learn to write their own Yoga Nidra Scripts and make a powerful impact in the world through this transformational practice.
What Is The Goal of Yoga Nidra?
Yoga Nidra is the meditative process of learning to identify yourself as Awareness itself. By layering your Awareness systematically through the maya koshas, or layers of illusion— what we typically identify as “us” such as body, emotions etc.— we come to experience our infinite Self, our True Self, that of Awareness itself.
Source is Awareness— the fundamental Grand Singularity of the Universe. It’s what’s all around us, it’s in everything, it’s our origin. It’s where we came from before we were born and where we go after we die. Yoga Nidra is a relaxing method of exploring all the things we might be aware of, to feel them pointing us to experience our innate purity and consciousness, to Awareness itself.
Since Source, Awareness itself, is omnipotent (can do anything), omnipresent (all present), and omniscient (all knowing), with practices such as Yoga Nidra, when you align with your True Self, that of Awareness itself, you experience your birthright of your own fundamental and innate wholeness, the wholeness of Source. This wholeness is not dependent on time, events, circumstances, or conditions. It just is. Therefore, the byproduct of experiencing your fundamental wholeness through Awareness practices like Yoga Nidra, is healing in body, mind, and spirit After all, wholeness is synonymous with healed. Mostly importantly, what heals inside of us is the fundamental human malady—one which transcends all civilizations, time, and technology— which is the false notion of being separate from Source.
Gayatri Mantra suggests that if we were to understand that everything comes from Source, we’d understand that we are no different than the very thing we seek.
Up-leveling Your Consciousness: Waking Up with The Yoga of Sleep
Yoga Nidra is a process of leveraging your mind state and to evolve your stages of consciousness to achieve this understanding as mentioned in the Gayatri Mantra. Its systematic relaxation and method of layered Awareness helps to down-regulate your nervous system providing deep rest while simultaneously accessing certain brainwave states which can put practitioners into a flow state. Mostly, Yoga Nidra puts people into the Nidra state (low alpha, high theta) which acts like a secret doorway to experience the part of you that exists beyond your rational, linear thinking. It’s the doorway into your infinite Self.
Though Nidra means sleep, it’s more about learning to wake up. Yoga Nidra helps us wake up from the illusions of our false identities, and helps us wake up to the truth, that we are Source itself that what we are fundamentally is Awareness.
Unlike other forms of meditation, Yoga Nidra encourages relaxation—indeed it’s the driver for this expansive state of consciousness. Unlike other forms of meditation, practitioners are not trying to focus the mind at the exclusion of other stimuli. Instead, in Yoga Nidra one learns to welcome each object that arises into one’s field of Awareness, recognize it for what it is, and merely be the witness of it. These objects could arise either by the facilitator’s suggestion or may occur spontaneously. Objects can be internal or external, physical, mental, or emotional, and each exists as another yet beautiful pointer, constantly pointing to this moment, enticing Awareness to know itself through all that it can be aware of.
Ultimately, we have the pleasure and responsibility to apply the Awareness we reveal during practices like Yoga Nidra into the day-to-day reality of our human lives. With this greater Awareness it feels as if the colors have been turned up in our life. With this greater Awareness we become more present to the miraculousness of even the mundane. With this greater Awareness, we see everyone and everything around us as a constant reminder to wake up to the truth: that we exist inside the eternal pocket of perfection.
One of the great things about Yoga Nidra is that you gain the benefits of this profound and transformation practice regardless of whether or not you’re seeking to “wake up.” Yoga Nidra is such a powerful practice because its benefits are so readily available, even if you’ve never experienced meditation, mindfulness, or yoga. All one has to do is lie down, close their eyes, relax, and practice witnessing whatever arises into one’s field of attention. You don’t even need to call it yoga or Nidra or anything. Call it guided napping!
Benefits of Yoga Nidra
Both empirical studies as well as countless anecdotal stories point to the benefits of Yoga Nidra. The benefits of regularly experiencing Yoga Nidra and the systematized and prolonged state of Awareness, include but are not limited to:
Concentrated rest: for all of us but especially the chronically under-rested
Managing emotions—stress, depression/anxiety
Eliminating compulsions & addictions
Healing self-limiting beliefs
Reprogramming the unconscious mind
Lowering blood pressure
Calming the mind
Building confidence
Improving your mood
Healing trauma
Managing grief
Clarity and perspective over problems
Massively increased learning, creativity, and productivity
Spiritual advancement
Healing physical, energetic, emotional, and spiritual maladies
As facilitators of Yoga Nidra, we have a great opportunity by sharing this practice: we get the chance to wake up to our own innate perfection while helping others do likewise. Through many years of practice and teaching, I realize that facilitating the practice is itself a deep practice of Awareness, replete with all the same benefits. Again, regardless if enlightenment is on your radar or not, the world desperately needs the aforementioned benefits of the practice…and whether practitioners are looking for it or not, they’ll get the enlightenment part too.
While practicing YN is easy, learning to teach it effectively and skillfully is difficult. I’ve dedicated the last 12 years of my life to exploring this fascinating and crucial mode of self-discovery. I’ve written and published a book, I offer regular trainings, classes, and workshops around the world as well as online, I write about Yoga Nidra in online journals, magazines, and my blog. I practice Yoga Nidra regularly and I’m thinking about Yoga Nidra ALL. THE. TIME.
Yoga Nidra has taught me more about myself and the Universe than any other practice and I’m thrilled for the opportunity to sharing some of my experience and knowledge with you.
Yoga Nidra Training: Learn to Make Your Own Yoga Nidra Scripts
Over the years I’ve learned a few things about Yoga Nidra and today, I’d like to explore some of the key elements to this fascinating practice to help give you some of the tools to create your own transformational practices in the form of Yoga Nidra scripts, both for yourself and others.
My intention for doing Yoga Nidra trainings to help you find YOUR voice as you facilitate powerful transformation for yourself and the world through Yoga Nidra classes and scripts.
Reading someone else's script can be good, sometimes even great. I’ve created a book of Yoga Nidra scripts. But your true power lies within your ability to facilitate this practice with your own voice. I want to teach you some of the tools and tips to access your true power of transformation through the fascinating practice of writing Yoga Nidra scripts.
I can tell you from experience that by crafting well thought out scripts, you’ll find yourself also transforming in the process.