From Script Follower to Master Facilitator: My Journey to Teaching Authenticity in Yoga Nidra
I’m passionate about Yoga Nidra. I’ve been teaching and facilitating Yoga Nidra since 2008. I’ve facilitated thousands of hours of Yoga Nidra and taught hundreds of teachers how to also facilitate this approachable yet transformational practice. I have learned volumes about the art of Yoga Nidra facilitation—what works, what doesn’t, and why.
So today, I want to share a few of these suggestions with you as well as a bit of my story about how I developed not only as a Yoga Nidra facilitator and teacher and how I evolved into developing my own Yoga Nidra method and why it’s so revolutionary.
Facilitator vs Teacher
Before we go on, let me unpack a few terms … I personally like to use the term Yoga Nidra facilitator to designate the person who leads a Yoga Nidra experience and Yoga Nidra teacher to designate the person who teaches others about Yoga Nidra or how to facilitate Yoga Nidra. I like these distinctions because, as I will mention, the real Yoga Nidra teacher is inside each of us and an effective guide understands this and skillfully facilitates their clients and students to access that wise teacher already within. Of course, “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet” so please use whatever term you like best.
My Yoga Nidra Journey: From Frustrated Teacher to Global Educator
Professional Rather Than Personal
Now, I’m sure I’m not alone here but in full transparency, one of the biggest reasons for taking a Yoga Nidra teacher training was less because I loved Yoga Nidra and more because I wanted more tools as an existing yoga and mindfulness teacher.
Wanting to be a more diverse and effective teacher is a fine reason for embarking on the journey of facilitating Yoga Nidra, but little did I know how personally transformative this practice would be, let alone how it would translate into my career. You know, I had a business prof in college once say that the equation for success is: interest breeds excellence and excellence breeds opportunities. Certainly that was the case for me as it relates to many things, especially Yoga Nidra.
Mind-Blowing Experiences
Early on in my Yoga Nidra journey, I experienced some truly life-changing emotional and spiritual healing from the practice. It gave me insights about myself, the world, and Universe as well as immense clarity about what yoga, Yoga Nidra, and meditation in general are all pointing to. I’ve learned more about myself, yoga, and the Universe through Yoga Nidra than any other practice in my life. So, even though I started teaching Yoga Nidra for professional reasons, I soon fell in love with Yoga Nidra practice for very personal reasons.
Inauthentic=Ineffective
But here’s the deal: Yes, the Yoga Nidra teacher training I took was incredible—I learned tons of stuff, it facilitated some beautiful insight, etc.—but it just wasn’t me. In other words, after my training, when I attempted to facilitate Yoga Nidra for my students, I sounded like a rote version of my teacher. Boring. Gross. When I tried to facilitate Yoga Nidra, my students would sometimes open their eyes to see what sort of drab spirit had possessed me. What’s worse is that these Yoga Nidra classes I taught were ineffective, not because the scripts themselves weren’t good—they were fine—but again they didn’t land because they weren’t me—I was in my head and not in my heart. I was putting people to sleep but in the wrong way.
This realization changed everything.
Also, I was guilty of wanting my students to have the same kind of mind-blowing experiences that I’d had with Yoga Nidra. My heart was in the right place but ultimately I’ve come to realize that this desire was misguided and I’ll tell you why in a minute.
Time Off, Figure It Out
So I was in a dilemma: I knew Yoga Nidra could be extremely transformative but I didn’t know how to facilitate the kind of transformation that I’d experienced, and again, the tired scripts I was given in my training just weren’t cutting the mustard. I didn’t know what to do so I just stopped facilitating Yoga Nidra for a while. I needed to give myself some time and space to figure it out.
I took a year or so off from facilitating Yoga Nidra so I could take the machine apart, to look under the hood, and then rebuild it from the ground up. I did this in a way to discover exactly how and why Yoga Nidra can create such amazing transformation while being so relaxing.
Rebuild The Machine
Eventually, I discovered that I didn’t need those early Yoga Nidra scripts anymore because once I understood how and why Yoga Nidra worked, I could make my own scripts and improvise my own Yoga Nidra classes in a way that was both effective and authentic. When I began facilitating Yoga Nidra again, I was putting tons of people to sleep all over again but this time in the right way. I started offering classes, workshops, and courses at the yoga studio which soon became the most popular classes on the schedule, often with over 50 students per class.
Putting People To Sleep In The Right Way
Pretty soon, other yoga and mindfulness teachers started pulling me aside with, “Come on, dude—what are you doing with this Yoga Nidra thing and how do I get in on this?” So, I began offering Yoga Nidra workshops to teach teachers how to facilitate Yoga Nidra for their students. The more I practiced, facilitated, and taught Yoga Nidra, the more I learned—about myself, the practice, and how to teach other teachers.
Soon, my afternoon Yoga Nidra workshops for teachers turned into a weekend training, then to a full 30-hour training.
Online Yoga Nidra Teacher Training
Eventually, I recorded my Yoga Nidra training and made it available by digital download so anyone, anywhere could take it. Almost overnight, I had people enrolled in my course all over the world. I had students everywhere from Iceland to Ireland, Meca to Montana and I can’t tell you how much I learned, both about Yoga Nidra as well as how to teach other teachers, all from the experience of creating the Yoga Nidra teacher training as well as the excellent feedback that I got from my students from around the world.
The Essential Component
Also, as I saw the immense diversity of those taking my Yoga Nidra teacher training, it soon became very clear to me how valuable it is to teach Yoga Nidra facilitators how NOT to become a rote version of their teacher (me). Instead, I learned to teach Yoga Nidra facilitators to be the best and most authentic version of themselves. How?
Instead of just offering my students Yoga Nidra scripts, I decided to teach very specific tools which give each teacher the freedom and power to find their own voice in this practice. This empowerment to personalize a Yoga Nidra experience was the golden nugget I lacked in the Yoga Nidra teacher training I took. Truly, discovering how to find your own voice and to teach with authenticity is one of the most important features of my program, one you don’t get from other programs. It’s true—other programs want to “own” the practice and method of facilitating Yoga Nidra but the truth is that all a facilitator needs is the right tools to find the perfect facilitator within. The facilitator will discover their own method and that’s the way they will be truly effective.
Going Deeper With My Online Course
Because I’m always learning, both about Yoga Nidra as well as the art of facilitation, there is always more and more I want to share with other facilitators. So, I spent two years fine-tuning and expanding my curriculum of both my live and online Yoga Nidra teacher trainings. What started as a 30-hour program expanded into 50 hours.
I love teaching in person but I’m also mindful of those who learn best online or for whom travel is difficult. So, to improve the efficacy of my online training, I spent boatloads of time as well as thousands of dollars to learn how to make effective online courses. Then I designed, wrote, recorded, edited, posted, and published an updated and optimized version of my online Yoga Nidra teacher training, improved greatly by all the many suggestions from teachers worldwide.
By the way, I’d love to teach you how to make online courses. If you’re interested, contact me and we’ll talk about mentorship.
Helpful Yoga Nidra Tips
Currently, my online Yoga Nidra teacher training is in full swing and each year I travel around the United States, Europe, and Asia offering live trainings. So, with many years of experience in practicing, facilitating, and training others about Yoga Nidra, building curriculum and courses and nurturing a world-wide client base, I want to share with you a few essential knowledge nuggets I’ve discovered about facilitating Yoga Nidra:
Create A Personal Practice: The Teacher Is Inside of You
We likely already know that personal practice is important to our teaching but let me tell you exactly why. Your personal practice gives you knowledge and insight that no other teacher can give you. The wisest teacher you will ever have, the one that will teach you most about facilitating Yoga Nidra already lives inside of you. This fact is so essential that in my Yoga Nidra teacher training, I offer specialized Yoga Nidra practices that help you to reveal that wise teacher inside of you.
Your personal relationship to Yoga Nidra is so critical that the first half of my Yoga Nidra teacher training focuses mostly on deepening your personal relationship to the practice. You learn about Yoga Nidra by doing Yoga Nidra (obvious, right?) and you will also explore the depths of Yoga Nidra through the many other lenses, including: history, psychology, myth, philosophy, poetry, physiology, neuroscience, and storytelling.
Teaching From Authentic Experience
When you deepen your personal relationship with the practice, you facilitate Yoga Nidra from your authentic experience and not by merely repeating the soundbites of your teacher. This will make your teachings land for your students because you’ll be sharing something from your heart and not your head. And in my 20+ years of being a career yoga, mindfulness, and Yoga Nidra teacher, I’m here to tell you that an authentic and personalized approach to teaching is perhaps the most important element that will distinguish average or even good teachers from truly exceptional teachers. The true gift of teaching is connecting heart to heart, not head to head, something you can only do by sourcing your own experience with the practice.
Adopt, Adapt, Innovate
Yes, the best Yoga Nidra teacher is already inside of you, however oftentimes we need a way of uncovering that wise teacher. After you’ve deepened your personal relationship to the practice, in the second section of my Yoga Nidra teacher training, I offer the tools and principles to become a truly transformational Yoga Nidra facilitator. One of the ways I like to do this is through the Adapt, Adopt, Innovate model.
Remember how I said that the reason I stopped teaching Yoga Nidra for a while was because I had exhausted the few tired scripts that my teacher had given me? Well, as I dismantled and rebuilt my own version of facilitating Yoga Nidra, I analyzed what I was doing and outlined tons of tools and principles that were effective at addressing the specific needs of my clients. Using these tools empowered me with the ability to improvise a Yoga Nidra experience that could address any of my clients’ needs. Plus, these tools and principles were translatable so that anybody could use them to have similar effect.
Yoga Nidra Scripts Can Be Helpful
In my Yoga Nidra teacher training, I offer over 100 pages of specialized Yoga Nidra scripts which demonstrate how to apply these tools and principles in real Yoga Nidra situations. For one, these diverse scripts help you to immediately start teaching effective Yoga Nidra practices that meet the individual needs of your clients, for two, and more importantly, these specialized scripts demonstrate how to use the tools and principles so that you learn how to make your own scripts. See, Yoga Nidra scripts aren’t bad, it’s just they can be limiting, both for the facilitator and students.
First, I offer a method for you to adopt, and show you how the tools and principles work within the context of many diverse Yoga Nidra scripts. Then, you begin to adapt the scripts to make them sound more like you and less like me. And finally, as you master these principles and tools, you’ll be prepared to innovate, to ditch my scripts altogether and facilitate your own flavor of Yoga Nidra, either by writing your own scripts or improvising a practice. This ensures that you facilitate Yoga Nidra in a way that not only meets the specific and unique needs of your clients, but also sounds 100% like YOU. This helps you to be the kind of extraordinary teacher your clients need you to be.
Every Teacher Is Unique
Let’s face it, people can take any old Yoga Nidra class on YouTube. But they can’t take your class except by you. You have a unique story, approach, and personality that will resonate with certain clients better than anybody else, regardless of experience. You also have access to a population that is special and unique and that can receive Yoga Nidra from you because of that proximity. Maybe you are a middle school teacher, a corporate executive, a mom of 12 kids—whatever—you understand the language, problems, and hearts of certain people better than anyone else and that’s why you’re a more effective teacher for them. This is why it serves both you and your students to learn the tools and principles of Yoga Nidra facilitation rather than merely relying on Yoga Nidra scripts which can become rote and robotic.
Yoga Nidra Tools
I keep talking about the tools and principles that help you find your own essential voice as a Yoga Nidra facilitator. The same way a sculptor, painter, or musician might use certain tools to help them access their creativity or to find their voice, in my Yoga Nidra teacher training, I teach you how to discover your own creativity with at least 15 very useful tools.
Guiding a Yoga Nidra practice by using tools and principles rather than a rote, paint-by-number approach, ensures that your teaching sounds like you rather than me and provides a deeper connection and efficacy with your students. Some of these tools I teach include: the Yoga Nidra Roadmap, welcoming/recognizing/witnessing, radical permissions, and learning how to use koshas like a ninja. Did you know that you don’t need to use every kosha in every practice? If you’re not familiar with koshas, no worries. The koshas are layers of our ego such as body, energy, mind, etc., that practices like Yoga Nidra use to practice being aware of as tools to expand your Awareness. When you start to understand how tools like the koshas help you to facilitate the overall goal of Yoga Nidra, you learn to use the right tool for the job for the right reason.
Yoga Nidra Roadmap
One of the most useful tools I offer is what I call the Yoga Nidra Roadmap. This tool is a loose formula that any facilitator can use to lead an effective and focused Yoga Nidra experience, but which gives tons of permission to the facilitator. It’s designed to be adaptable so you can apply it to the purpose at hand. The Yoga Nidra Roadmap lays out a timeline and organized options for the facilitator such as setting up the practice, expanding Awareness while relaxing the body, exploring which koshas to use as tools for which practices, how long to focus on each kosha, and when and how to finish the practice.
So, whether you’re facilitating a Yoga Nidra practice for better sleep for your mom, a Yoga Nidra for trauma for a friend, or a Yoga Nidra to help your kid through test anxiety, the Yoga Nidra Roadmap helps guide and pace you through facilitating an effective Yoga Nidra practice in a way that helps you do it authentically.
Every Person’s Experience Is Their Own
Remember how in the beginning I wanted all of my students to have the same kind of incredible experiences I had with Yoga Nidra? Of course we want people to have great experiences with this practice but we do ourselves and our students a massive disservice if we try to force a certain outcome. Even if you establish a particilar purpose for the practice, such as Yoga Nidra for stress, I’ve learned that the practice has unique plans for each practitioner and that our job as facilitators is to do just that—facilitate our students’ own experience, not force anything to happen. As a facilitator your primary role is to facilitate Awareness. You may also help to create the conditions favorable for certain outcomes but can’t force the outcome. Remember, the best teacher is Yoga Nidra itself. As a facilitator, your job is to deliver the tools and direction for practice and then get out of the way. Allow each student to have their own experience.
Set and Setting
One of the teachings we explore in my Yoga Nidra teacher training is how to create an effective container for the practice. Part of creating an effective and nurturing container for our students is being mindful of set and setting.
“Set” refers to the mindset of the student. As a facilitator, you can help create the right mindset by offering practices such as leading a mindful and inviting discussion, gentle poses, as well as breathing and mindfulness exercises. You can also create a receptive mindset to students who may be nervous or have resistance by offering copious permission, assurance that nothing is supposed to or not supposed to happen in practice, that it’s ok to fall asleep, and that there is no wrong way to practice Yoga Nidra. You may recognize that people show up to class stressed out because they just came from work, were stuck in traffic while in a rush to get there, and couldn’t find a parking spot at the studio. So, you can help change their mindset from stressed to calm by using the tools you have to prepare for a more effective Yoga Nidra experience.
Setting You can help create a supportive “setting” by creating a welcoming, clean environment that helps to optimize a student’s experience. Even if people are listening to a recording of you or are on Zoom, you can invite people to create their own Yoga Nidra setting by making up their “Yoga Nidra nest” beforehand with all the props they need to be comfortable. Because you can’t accommodate for all possible distractions and due to the fact that your students will likely not be practicing in a secluded Tibetan cave somewhere, when distractions inevitably arise, as the facilitator you can simply invite your students to welcome those distractions into the practice as an object that simply helps them practice awareness. Invite a curiosity about what may otherwise be a distraction. For example, if there’s a sound outside of the room, use it as an object to merely practice witnessing without opinion—it might be the most powerful pointer of the practice for that student.
Just The Beginning
Now, these are only some of the many things I offer in my Yoga Nidra training—just the beginning. As I was developing my Yoga Nidra teacher training, I quickly realized that I had way more things that I wanted to teach with facilitators than would be digestible in a level 1 offering. I’d need to offer more trainings—advanced trainings. Because let’s face it, it’s taken me almost 20 years of experience and thousands of hours of teaching to understand the art of Yoga Nidra facilitation so thoroughly and something as nuanced and transformational as this simply requires a baseline knowledge experience before you can go to the next level. This is why I developed my Advanced Yoga Nidra teacher training. The next level of Yoga Nidra facilitation builds on the first and includes:
Yoga Nidra Dyads
Yoga Nidra Dyads are a fascinating and very effective way of practicing Yoga Nidra. They are also very different. Unlike a traditional Yoga Nidra experience where the facilitator leads the entire practice and the practitioner merely listens, a dyad is where a facilitator and practitioner engage in a relaxing but Awareness-based conversation. The facilitator helps the practitioner become very relaxed, helps them establish their Sankalpa (intention) but then through a process of what I call Reflective Awareness guides the practitioner through a process of verbalizing the objects they are aware moment to moment and aids them in welcoming, recognizing, and witnessing (sometimes respond to) these objects. The facilitator may also skillfully help the practitioner toggle between then combining opposites to experience greater awareness through a process I call stereoscopic consciousness. Yoga Nidra dyads are very useful in a therapeutic, one-on-one setting. I say that in a scripted or led Yoga Nidra experience the facilitator is leading the practice, but in a dyad, the practitioner leads the practice inside the container that the facilitator provides.
Expanding The Yoga Nidra Roadmap
Maps are useful but when you’ve traveled somewhere often enough, you discover your own way to arrive at the destination. In the advanced Yoga Nidra teacher training we explore how to color outside of the lines of the Yoga Nidra Roadmap so you can be even more creative and effective in your approach with your clients and students.
Expanding Your Yoga Nidra Toolbox
Once you’ve had a chance to get comfortable with many of the tools from the first training, we deepen and add to your Yoga Nidra toolbox. We explore and master skills such as the tone, timber, and timing of your voice, anchoring and layering the koshas, and when/if/how to use visualizations.
One of the questions I get asked most often is whether or not it’s skillful to use music in class. There are few if no hard and fast rules in Yoga Nidra facilitation and the use of music in a Yoga Nidra experience could be either wonderfully supportive or extremely distracting to the overall objective of the practice. In the advanced training, we explore if, how, and when to use music in a Yoga Nidra context and if you do, how to use it to create a welcoming set and setting or even a primary and driving element to advance the practice.
Creating Specialized Classes and Improvising Yoga Nidra
Mastering the tools and roadmaps of Yoga Nidra facilitation frees the facilitator to be able to walk into any situation with any client and skillfully and effectively improvise a Yoga Nidra experience without the use of any script. Also, mastering these tools empowers the facilitator to build scripts that are very specific to the unique needs of their clients thus enabling you to make custom-tailored Yoga Nidra experiences for your client. In the advanced course, we explore topics and together build class outlines that are both specialized and nuanced.
Recording and sharing Yoga Nidra
One of the great things about Yoga Nidra is that it is easily shared through audio recordings which can be uploaded to a website or sharing platform like Insight Timer or YouTube. In this advanced training we use the technology that you are likely using already (your phone, maybe your laptop or tablet) to create DIY recordings that sound like professional recordings. We also explore how to upload these recordings to platforms so you can share your gifts with the world and begin to gain a global audience.
Closing
I’m absolutely passionate about Yoga Nidra. For me, something that is so fascinating, is how Yoga Nidra has been such a direct pathway to spiritual understanding, both by practicing but also by teaching and facilitating Yoga Nidra. Truly this is why I call my method of Yoga Nidra Waking Up with the Yoga of Sleep.
I invite you to explore your pathway of Yoga Nidra facilitation with Waking Up with the Yoga of Sleep, my Yoga Nidra teacher training and Advanced Yoga Nidra training.
Discover and broaden your own voice in this essential practice that has the power to transform, heal, and optimize people from all walks of life with all sorts of situations.
Over the nearly 20 years that I’ve practiced, facilitated, and taught Yoga Nidra, I’ve learned a few essential truths: Yoga Nidra is as transformational as it is easy to practice and the way to be effective as a facilitator is through skillful authenticity.
It’s my passion to help you find your voice in this practice.
You owe it to yourself and your students to be the best Yoga Nidra facilitator you can be.
Please join me.
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