today I thought I’d discuss the optimal lengths for a Yoga Nidra practice: What is too long and what is too short.
Read moreYoga Nidra For Grief Can Help
Yoga Nidra for Grief
Here’s my weekly tid-bit. I hope you enjoy. It’s a Yoga Nidra for grief practice. I find that …
Crime Pays
One of my greatest spiritual teachers in life has been my car. My ride serves me as a tangible and relatable metaphor for my body, my life, and what have been the life-changing practices of yoga and meditation. These practices are perhaps the most effective vehicles that transport me to my ultimate destination and purpose in this Universe. My car is a close second.
A shattered car window obliterated any obstruction from my seeing the complicated intersection between justice and compassion. A constellation of motorcycle accidents blessed me with life-changing gifts I would have never imagined. When my truck was literally stolen from out of my hands, the Universe was directing down a twisted road that ultimately led to understanding kindness and generosity.
Though I didn’t always understand it, in retrospect, I realize that the mishaps of my vehicle have presented me with some sort of car koan: It is only by your ride breaking down that you will arrive at your destination. Now, I see that the mechanical mayhem I’ve endured throughout much of my life is the action of a benevolent Universe trying its best to bless my life and give me a lift further down my road of spiritual evolution, even if my actual ride rests motionless on the side of a dark and lonely highway, it’s hazard lights blinking weakly into the darkness.
My ride often reminds me of a valuable teapot. When I lived in Korea, once, a monk gave me a box of expensive tea while reciting the inscription on the box, “Zen and the taste of tea is the same.” At tea houses, the teapots with the most pronounced veins, cracks stained by their decades of use, were deemed the ones with the most spirit. Like those valuable teapots, I am beginning to understand that the derelict nature of my vehicle often demonstrated a spirit much beyond what I could perceive in the moment.
This is one of those stories …
There was a time in my yoga career when I was teaching as many yoga classes as possible in order to make ends meet, sometimes as many as 27 classes a week. I loved teaching but I just hadn’t learned yet how to make it fincancially sustainable yet.
Around 2006, I had just picked up a new yoga teaching gig at the new Soma Yoga studio, the one on 1700 South in Salt Lake City, Utah, if you know it. One day, I showed up early to class, parked my car in the lot outside of the studio, and thought that I’d go on a walk for a few minutes before class to clear my mind and grease the wheels a little bit before being “on” in front of a yoga class.
In those days, I didn’t own a lot of pockets; my wardrobe consisted mainly of yoga clothes. Instead, I’d sling a bag over my shoulder as I drove from yoga gig to yoga gig. If you are someone who also rolls with a purse, particularly a big one, then you might relate with the completely absurd accumulation that can happen with such a satchel. You start off with only your keys and wallet in there and before you know it, you find yourself lugging around 27 pounds worth of pens, punch cards, and half-eaten bagels.
So, before heading out on my walk, to save my shoulder from lugging the metric ton of detritus I had accumulated in my bag, stupidly, I threw my bag under the seat of my car before closing and locking the door, keeping only my keys. My bag was out of sight for sure but had a significant proportion of my essential yet meager possessions including, my ID, debit and credit cards, check book, $42 in cash, and my brand new iPod, the ones that looked like a small pack of gum, remember those? Classic!
I’d only been walking for a few minutes when I decided that on second thought, I’d better just go to the studio and set up early. Maybe I’d run though some poses to warm up. As I arrived back to the parking lot, I was walking toward my car to grab my bag and looking through the glass of my driver-side window, I noticed with some curiosity that the window on the passenger side was remarkably cleaner than that of the driver’s side window. Was someone washing windows in the parking lot? “They did a thorough job,” I told myself, “the window looks so clean that it almost looks like there isn’t a window … wait a minute?!”
The spray of broken glass on the asphalt near the passenger door confirmed my fears. Someone must have seen me throw my bag in the car, walk around the corner then, in the 3 or 4 minutes that I’d been walking, smashed my window and stole my bag. My 42 dollars! It was probably more than I had in my bank account at the time. My iPod! I stood by my car feeling equal parts violated, angry, and stupid.
Without any time to process this shock, my students began arriving at the studio. Soon, the studio was filled with eager yogis, waiting for me to teach. I had no choice but to surrender my emotions. I sat on my mat in the front of the classroom full of students, closed my eyes, and placed my still-shaking hands at my heart before chanting three long OOOhhmmmms. Into my head, came the Leonard Cohen lyrics, “There’s a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” I wondered what light could penetrate that dark feeling in my heart.
But I had to teach a class. And strangely, instead of being distracted by the shock of someone breaking into my car, this real-life experience was a splash of cold water in the face to wake me up and become extremely present. Raw and with all pretense stripped away, I proceeded to teach one of the best classes I can remember ever having taught.
After class, I filed a police report and borrowed the $145 I would need to fix my window.
Several weeks later I was surprised and exhilarated to receive a call from a detective investigating my case. He told me that they had found the guy who broke my window and stole my bag. I hoped that the detective would then announce with an air of sweeping heroism that they had opened a case, their best and brightest had worked tirelessly to solve the mystery, and by the fruits of much hard work, my property would be returned to me, that justice had prevailed. But he did not.
Online Yoga Nidra Training
Instead, he spent 15 long minutes trying fruitlessly to explain how the guy who had broken into my car and stolen all my stuff (known henceforth referred to as “the perp”) had tried to use my checks and ID to operate some complicated check scheme worth much more than my $42 and iPod, that “the perp” was recognized by security cameras at the bank or something, and that essentially they drove to his house and arrested him without much drama, bla bla bla. I wasn’t following the bravado of the detective’s drawn-out overly-complicated caper about check fraud. Boring. And frankly, I didn’t care if it didn’t involve getting my 42 bucks and iPod outta hock. What I did glean from the story is that they had caught “the perp,” that he was in custody awaiting a trial or sentencing or something, and that I was invited to attend the hearing if I wanted. If I couldn’t get my iPod back, at least I’d be morbidly gratified to see the punk who’d stolen it.
On the court date, I drove to the courthouse, parked and locked my car (window intact), and this time shouldered my bag, new and uncharacteristically free of the usual “memorabilia.” Once inside the courthouse, through the security portal, and out of view of the scrutinizing security guards who wondered with their inquisitive eyes why I wore a purse, I walked the maze of marble hallways and found the courtroom assigned to this hearing. I picked a seat in the back and sat down feeling nervous, like somehow I was the one who was on trial. I looked around and there were a LOT of people in that room. It was clear than many of the people crammed into that room were there to see what might happen to their loved ones who were in custody.
I had never been to a hearing. I was expecting smart, snappy lawyers in expensive suits examining and cross-examining witnesses, shouting intermittently, “I object, your honor!” before bringing some crucial piece of evidence to slay the jury’s prejudice and right the scales of justice. But it wasn’t like that at all. No, instead, I’d describe this as a public viewing of a meeting between two lawyers and a judge as they hammered out their schedule for the next 3 months. The many people in the room made it hot, oppressive, and claustrophobic. I felt more as if I was at someone else’s family reunion being hosted at the DMV than sitting in the hallowed halls of justice I’d seen in movies and TV.
After maybe an hour or so, they finally announced the case for “the perp” and into the courtroom strolls a scrappy kid, early twenties, spiky haircut, and cocky despite the manacles and prison-chic jumper he was wearing. A tired-looking judge stared over his glasses at a thick file while shuffling papers and began mumbling dates interspersed between unintelligible “legalese” to a pair of lawyers who were alert but far from agitated regarding either the conviction or releasing of “the perp.” I’ve had more lively conversations with my wife about what kind of apples to buy at the grocery store than this trio had about the situation at hand. But from what I could discern, in just a few minutes, they’d decided that something else needed to happen at some other time so this really was just a meeting to schedule another meeting several weeks later. And just like that, it was over. Those involved shuffled out the door to make way for the dozen or so other people there to schedule or reschedule other events. I left as well, somewhat deflated by the lack of resolution of my case but firmly resolved NOT to attend anymore of this dramaless drama. I wasn’t getting my stuff back and I didn’t need to add insult to injury by attending long, drawn-out scheduling meetings. Getting emotionally involved in this situation felt like a prison sentence in itself. So I let it go.
On the way out the door, I was surprised to bump into Brenda, one of my regular students at my Intro To Yoga class I was teaching on Wednesday nights a different nearby yoga studio. “Hi, Brenda! What are you doing here?” “Oh, I’m a defense attorney. This is work. What are YOU doing here?” she asked with a skeptical curiosity. I relayed my brief non-drama about the hearing. She told me how much she enjoyed coming to yoga but found it difficult to get out of work early enough to make it to class. I asked her if she thought that perhaps she and other colleagues at her work would be interested in some in-house yoga, either on their lunch break or after work. She positively lit up at the idea and said that she would ask around to see if anybody else would be game.
A few weeks later, I began weekly after-work yoga classes for Brenda and her colleagues in the law library of their offices, a hushed space dampened with old, plush carpet and lined ceiling to floor with limitless rows of stately volumes of law books. Once a week, we would roll out our mats, turn off the fluorescents, and align our movement with our breath as I helped them unwind from their day of defending people like “the perp.” They helped me to realize that many of their defendants are innocent and many who aren’t innocent are often unfairly sentenced because of the system’s prejudice toward the prosecution. Either way, they reminded me that everyone is entitled to have someone smart in their corner who speaks dates and legalese.
I soon discovered that despite the unmitigatedly dull hearing I had attended, being a defense attorney was a much more stressful job than I had imagined. These attorneys needed some way to breathe a sigh of relief and let go of some of the unseen tension they gained in and out of the courtroom. During one yoga class, one of the defense attorneys broke out of a warrior pose and began pacing around her mat, radiating anger like heat waves off a barbecue. I asked her if she was ok and she told me with a forced calm that she was working through some intense anger about a case she was involved in, that someone’s life was literally held in the balance.
Those classes after work with the Legal Defenders gave us all a way to find balance in our lives and we grew close in the process. Though I’d see them only once a week, sometimes more if they also attended classes at the yoga studio, over the years we became true friends. On numerous occasions I was invited to Legal Defender staff parties and I met their kids, spouses, and bosses. They met my family as well and supported and witnessed me during many ups and downs in my life and career. Together we were engaged in the practice of life.
I loved teaching the Legal Defenders and taught that class for many, many years. Eventually, I moved out of town and I had to hand the gig off to a fellow and trusted teacher who continues to teach this class today which is now in its 14th or 15th year!
Not long ago, having moved back to Salt Lake City, I had the opportunity to sub my old class with the Legal Defenders. Since I had left town, the Legal Defenders had moved buildings. Instead of the muted and quiet carpet of the law library, now we unrolled our mats over the modern natural-fiber jute rugs in the hip, custom-built lounge area complete with an espresso bar, ping pong table, and swinging chairs that hang from the ceiling. The Legal Defenders are still the low person on the legal totem pole, but at least now they are consoled with a decent espresso. Many of the original students continue to attend the class after all these years and upon my return we celebrated a happy reunion and reminisced about the many things that have happened over the years since we began this class: marriages, divorces, retirements, kids, and adoptions.
After leading the class through some movement to release stress and loosen up tight muscles, I directed the students into an extra-long savasana. I learned years ago that they desperately needed it. As I was sitting quietly in meditation, I found myself thinking about the string of events that had led me to be where I was at that moment.
I thought, “Thank you, ‘the perp,’ you have given me a lot. You afforded me a unique true-crime, insider’s-view of our legal system (sometimes boring AF), you’ve facilitated an enduring and enjoyable gig for me, and most importantly, you paved the way toward the richness of several friendships that have endured 15 years and counting.”
Then, as I sat in meditation, I performed a rough calculation of the amount of money that I had personally earned over the years from this after-work yoga class and it totaled well over $25,000. More than enough to replace a passenger-side window … and buy a new iPod.
Yoga Nidra: How Opposites Reveal Oneness
I’ve been teaching Yoga Nidra since 2008. While I initially took Dr. Richard Millers iRest Yoga Nidra training and have the deepest respect for that method, I do not teach that method. Instead, I’ve learned volumes about the fascinating and spiritually illuminating subject of Yoga Nidra by simply doing the practice and studying many teachers. I have since developed my own Yoga Nidra training and Yoga Nidra scripts which I feel gives teachers the power of understanding Yoga Nidra’s “what” and “why” so that they can deliver the practice in their own voice based on certain essential principles derived from their own experience.
My teaching style is based on using the koshas to explore the ego as a tool to illuminate the other half of your being, your Awareness. I encourage students to welcome anything and everything that arises into their Awareness, to acknowledge it for what it is with as much objectivity as possible, and learn to merely observe it. Doing so opens practitioners to the magical opportunity of responding rather than reacting to stimuli, not only in the practice of Yoga Nidra but more usefully in the practice of life. After all, Krishnamurti said that “The highest form of intelligence is the ability to observe without evaluating.”
I teach that what we seek to accomplish in Yoga Nidra is to wake up to our True Nature, one that is not bound by the limits of the ego nor is that of pure consciousness, but rather what I call the Both And Nature which is the beautiful express of consciousness meets form.
One of the tools I use regularly to arrive at the beautiful experience is using opposites during a Yoga Nidra practice.
We use the practice of exploring a binary and then attempt to hold the opposites in our Awareness in order to pop out of ego consciousness, limited to experiencing the world as this or that, and instead experience ourselves as Awareness itself. Ego exists only in a realm of this or that. Awareness is the Singularity, the place where everything exists as part of the larger whole. There are no opposites in Awareness, it's non-binary. Holding opposites together in your Awareness is a simple and useful tool to help you experience yourself as Awareness itself. Eventually, this will then lead you to experiencing your life in your Both And Nature, the marriage of the ego and Awareness.
After establishing the feeling of being Awareness itself, perhaps arrived at by holding opposites like the sound of my voice and the feeling in your heart, you then reinforce and deepen this feeling throughout your Yoga Nidra practice as you go move further into your layered Awareness by exploring the koshas. Remember that whatever you are aware of reveals Awareness itself. You can use opposites to illuminate Awareness in the realms of body (anamayakosha), for example, by first bringing attention one's to right hand, then left, then holding right and left simultaneously in Awareness. You can do this in other koshas too by holding opposite emotions or thoughts or beliefs.
I tend to start a Yoga Nidra practice with an opposites exercise because it's great to begin the practice with a felt sense of Awareness, even if it's mild or somewhat contrived, rather than arriving at it in the middle or end of practice. I believe it works best to do this because we experience deepening awareness in layers rather than in a linear fashion. In other words, start by inviting the practitioners to feel themselves as Awareness right off the bat, perhaps with an opposites exercise, then continue doing it here and there
throughout the practice and in each koshas. (Remember that you don't have to do it through every koshas. Each kosha is just one way to anchor your Awareness.) Each time you invite the practitioner to experience themselves as Awareness, perhaps by doing the opposites exercise, it deepens the practitioner's Awareness. They will therefore experience the practice from that point forward with increasingly deeper Awareness. Even if you were to repeat a body scan a few times in a row, each time you go through it, provided they were reminded of being Awareness iteslf, they would experience it differently because of the layered nature of Awareness.
Again, you're not trying to divorce the ego and seek to experience yourself as only Awareness. Rather, you're using the ego to illuminate that which you would otherwise not know about yourself, the Awareness part of you, the part that always is and never changes. Ultimately as you come to know both ego and Awareness intimately, you give birth to a third thing, what I call the Both And Nature, the marriage of Awareness and form.
To continue explaining it, the ego exists in a binary, a state that sees things as this or that, me or you, have or have not. We naturally tend to identify as the ego because we define our reality by what we can see, taste, feel, etc. What's more is that it's our natural psychology makes us differentiate ourselves from other objects from an early age. Why would we know anything other than the ego? Well, we come from the place that is beyond ego, Source, and no matter how much of a seeker you are or how "spiritually minded" you want to be, we are all constantly reach to come back to our Origin, Source, home, be that consciously or unconsciously. We search every discipline imaginable to tell us what it means to be.
The Awareness part of us has no form, cannot be seen, felt, etc. This is tricky because typically we have heretofore defined everything we know as "real" based on the criteria of the ego, that which we can feel, see, taste, etc. So how can we possibly come to know ourselves as Awareness and not just the ego?
The ego is the perfect and balanced opposite of Awareness. The ego cannot exist in a vacuum any more than Awareness can. We don't transcend the ego to understand ourselves only as Awareness. In fact, the ego is our greatest tool that illuminates our Awareness and the experience of the marriage of the two gives us our True Nature, our Both And Nature. I like the analogy of a marriage, consciousness marries form and the love child between the two is YOU, a spiritual being born of Awareness and form. You are the Divine, up-leveling itself to wake up know itself more intimately. You are giving birth to yourself as you practice presence.
But arriving at experiencing yourself as this holy marriage takes a practice. We must learn how to not identify only as ego but rather as this third thing. But since ego is what we are most familiar with, what we pay most of our attention to, it actually serves as perhaps the best way to illuminate that which lies beyond the ego.
In Yoga Nidra we can practice experiencing our Both And Nature by first establishing a binary to bring opposites into our field of attention, opposites like inside/outside, me/you, body/sound. Doing so leans into the practiced attention to ego and refines your focus and attention on one thing and then the another. Then, as you try holding them together, simultaneously in your Awareness, your ego freaks out and experiences cognitive dissonance because it only knows a world of this or that and never the twain shall meet, at least according the the ego. While these two things seem like complete opposites, they share something so obviously in common that it's as easy to miss as the nose on your face. What these two apparent opposites have in common is that you are aware of them. What you're aware of reveals Awareness itself. When you hold opposites simultaneously in your Awareness, your consciousness is forced to leave the realm of the binary to experience that which exists in the grand Singularity, Awareness itself.
Learning to regularly experience the Awareness part of your being through practices such as Yoga Nidra, forever alters your self-concept. You no longer feel yourself as only ego. Instead you begin to feel your Both And Nature, the beautiful marriage that joins finite and infinite, body and spirit, form and consciousness. Living life in your Both And Nature doesn't make you blind to the ego, the natural textures, emotions, and vicissitudes of life. Quite the opposite. Living life from your Both And Nature helps you to begin to see every molecule in the world as an opportunity to practice presence, Awareness. The entire world, with its flavors, textures emotions, and even challenges, exists as a testament to your own Beingness. Every sunrise, every rainy afternoon, every breakup is somehow a love letter from the Universe, form whispering to consciousness, "Wake up! Watch this! I've made it just for you!"
Truly anything that helps you to be present has the capacity to do this for you but Yoga Nidra is a great and easy way of doing it. Powerful and effective. Plus relaxing. The opposites exercise is just one mechanism to help practice.
This reminds me of the Sermon of the Flower, origin of Zen Budhism where the Buddha gathers his disciples and without a word holds up a single flower. Most are mute with confusion by this gesture but Mahakasyapa smiles with understanding. He understands that this flower has the same beingness as everything else in the Universe. Words cannot explain this knowing. Mahakasypa experiences the marriage of form and consciousness. He hears what every object in the universe is whispering, including this humble flower is whispering the truth, that every thing exists in the marriage of form and being.
Yoga Nidra Scripts are Finally Available!!
Available as an instant download!
Instant downloadable PDF
These Yoga Nidra scripts empower you to teach like an expert today!
20 Yoga Nidra Scripts Vol. 1!
This is a compilation of some of my favorite Yoga Nidra scripts I’ve created to teach my Yoga Nidra classes, teachings, and recordings.
Instantly download these scripts onto your computer or smart device, or print them off.
The Scripts Included in This PDF Book
Yoga Nidra For Grief
Yoga Nidra for Goals
Yoga Nidra for Healing
Yoga Nidra for Sleep
Yoga Nidra for Grounding
Yoga Nidra for Sankalpa (Intentions)
Basic Yoga Nidra Practice: Body
Yoga Nidra for Energy and Chakras
Yoga Nidra for Anxiety Management
Full Yoga Nidra Practice (all Koshas)
Yoga Nidra for Heart Energy
Yoga Nidra for Stress
Yoga Nidra for Relaxed Alertness
Yoga Nidra for your Trinity Nature
Yoga Nidra for Compassion
Yoga Nidra for Abundance
Yoga Nidra to Start Your Day
Yoga Nidra for Bliss (Anandamaya Kosha)
Yoga Nidra for Happiness
Yoga Nidra for Inner Wisdom
I wanted to compile these scripts because while practicing Yoga Nidra may be easy and relaxing, teaching it effectively can be difficult. I’ve spent many years learning how to teach Yoga Nidra effectively. I’ve logged many thousands of hours teaching Yoga Nidra and have learned through trial-and-error what best to do and NOT to do in order to hopefully facilitate an effective Yoga Nidra experience for myself and for students. This compilation of scripts is designed to put the words of effective, and what I hope are skillful, Yoga Nidra practices in your hands so that you and your students can also benefit from these practices.
How to Use These Scripts and Best Practices
These scripts are designed to be used for yourself or to facilitate Yoga Nidra practices for individual clients or classes. Feel free to record these scripts for non-commercial purposes. Please understand that everything in this book is copyrighted, thank you very much.
I highly encourage you to make it a regular practice to record yourself reading these scripts, which could be your intention for purchasing this compilation in the first place, but especially if you are going to be facilitating others. Doing so allows you essential information about the way you are offering the practice. I know, I know, I know: everyone hates to hear their own voice but I can tell you from personal experience that doing so is perhaps the greatest tool you have to refine your teaching.
Thank YOU!
Lastly, Thank you!
I’d love to hear from you! Please drop me a line and let me know how your teaching is going, if you have any questions in particular, and what insight you have discovered through this fascinating practice. Let’s keep the conversation going about Yoga Nidra.
Also, stay in touch so I can keep you in the loop with information from level 1 and advanced trainings, retreats, recordings, and other resources.
I love facilitating Yoga Nidra and I’m also passionate about teaching others to facilitate Yoga Nidra. I love to teach live Yoga Nidra teacher trainings because I love to see how people are using this practice. I see so many different kinds of people in my trainings including, yoga and meditation teachers, reiki and other energy workers, geriatric health professionals, high-performance coaches, high school teachers and counselors, mental health therapists, parents, and even family and divorce lawyers, because each person understands how this transformative practice can help the part of the world that they are blessed to work with. I’m also really happy to offer an an online Yoga Nidra teacher training so that people all over the world can learn the principles of effectively leading a Yoga Nidra class along a timeline and location that works best for them.
My trainings explore the principles and fundamentals of Yoga Nidra to first outline the “what and why” of Yoga Nidra in order to then understand the “how” of Yoga Nidra. I find that organizing the trainings in this way enables teachers to facilitate this transformational practice with the power of doing so in their own voice to match their own specific needs as well as those of their students. Also, I strongly believe that once you know what you are aiming for, you will likely find your own pathway to get there, one that feels perfect for you. Eventually, you’ll be able to create your own scripts and improvise a practice that is powerful and necessary to yourself and your students. If you are passionate (or even curious) about facilitating Yoga Nidra and learning to move beyond these scripts to create your own as well as conduct 1:1 Yoga Nidra Dyads, a completely improvised experience based on the real-time awareness of your student, I invite you to explore either my online Yoga Nidra teacher training or my live Yoga Nidra teacher trainings.
You may also wish to check out my book, Practical Yoga Nidra: a 10-Step Method to Reducing Stress, Improving Sleep, and Restoring Your Spirit, which hit the shelves in December of 2019. I’m thrilled at the global response that it has received so far.
My sincere desire is that these scripts will help you facilitate your own journey through Yoga Nidra as well as help you facilitate others’ journey as well.
Namaste,
Yoga Nidra: The Yoga Of Sleep
Yoga Nidra: The Yoga of Sleep
I’ve been practicing Yoga Nidra since 2005 and have been teaching it since 2008. Yoga Nidra has taught me more about myself and the Universe than perhaps any other practice. It has also personally facilitated some of the most illuminating, spiritual, healing, experiences of my life and has truly shaped me into who I am today. It’s changed my entire world view and has changed the way I approach life, teach yoga, and understand myself and the purpose for existence.
I absolutely love Yoga Nidra! Yoga Nidra is often called the “yoga of sleep.” a very approachable yet effective way of experiencing the Oneness of your being through the process of a relaxing journey through deepening layers of Awareness. Yoga Nidra acts kind of like a guided meditation, where practitioners lie down, close their eyes and listen to a facilitator (teacher) lead to experience themselves as Awareness itself. The fact that Yoga Nidra is so easy to practice and often leaves practitioners feeling rested, illuminated, and calm, makes this a popular, simple, and effective way of exploring one’s higher Self. Yoga Nidra is like napping your way to enlightenment!
Yoga Nidra: Shaping Lives
I have also seen Yoga Nidra transform the lives of countless students, facilitating everything from spiritual growth such as connecting with their Eternal being to tapping in to a wise inner teacher to hear vital personal direction. Students love telling me about how Yoga Nidra has helped them with practical issues like getting better sleep, managing stress, and lowering blood pressure, to name only a few.
I truly believe that Yoga Nidra can change the world by helping people to be the very best and illuminated versions of themselves. Sharing Yoga Nidra is one of my primary missions in life and I’m thrilled to be spreading the news of this transformational practice around the world.
Mayakoshas and Removing the Mask Illusions
Yoga Nidra is but one practice that leads people to experience their highest Selves and to come to the ultimate state of Oneness with all things. The explicit purpose for Yoga Nidra is to layer your attention through the illusions of the ego (the mayakoshas) in order to dis-identify as the ego and instead identify as Awareness itself. These layers of illusion are:
Anamaya kosha, or animal layer
Pranamaya kosha or energy layer
Manomaya kosha or emotions/thoughts layer
Vijnanamaya kosha or dreaming, unconscious, beliefs, and symbols layer
Anandamaya kosha or bliss layer
Yoga Nidra helps a person to recognize these parts of themselves to explore the part of themselves that can simply witness these parts. Soon a person appreciates these changeable parts of their being as the primary way to illuminate that which is unchanging, their True Nature, that of Awareness itself. Doing so heals what I feel is the fundamental human problem which is feeling separate from Source.
Yoga Nidra for Healing
I believe that wellness is the byproduct of Awareness and as such, the Awareness a practitioner may experience through Yoga Nidra can catalyze myriad other kinds of transformations in many practical and useful ways such as help with stress, grief, setting goals, starting your day, getting great sleep, achieving a state of relaxed alertness, and even creating abundance in your life. These are just a few of the many topics you’ll find in my Yoga Nidra recordings.
Yoga Nidra Training
If you’re interested in learning how to facilitate this incredible practice in the power and authenticity of your own voice to bless the lives of 1:1 clients, classes, and yourself, I invite you to look at my live Yoga Nidra trainings or Online Yoga Nidra Teacher Training.
Luxury Château Yoga Retreat in Bordeaux Region, France
June 13–19, 2020
Yoga Nidra for Compassion
Today I want to talk about meditation for compassion.
Everybody knows that meditation helps with all kinds of things ranging from greater attention span, less stress, and demonstrative health improvements including, blood pressure, sleep, and heart health. In the past 25 years or so, more and more scientific research has been conducted to answer empirically how meditation can have these great results.
One study in particular looked at how various styles of meditation have lasting results after meditation. In this study, they looked at a compassion meditation style and discovered that when meditators practiced a total of just 7 hours of compassion meditation, that it has a distinct and lasting benefit of feeling well-being for humankind. Not only will you increase your compassion and love for others but you will also improve your love of self also. Once I read about this study, I thought of how fantastic it would be to beef up my compassion levels and I’d create a Yoga Nidra for Compassion recording. In fact, it’s one of the tracks that I have on my Essential Yoga Nidra with Scott Moore Vol. 1. I wanted to offer this recording for free for anybody who was interested in exploring meditation for compassion. It’s about 30 minutes long and mixes Yoga Nidra with Loving Kindness meditation. I find it to be powerful and a lovely way to meditate.
If you felt so inspired, you could choose to practice this meditation every day for the next 14 days to get your 7 hours minimum of compassion meditation to start to see how your attitude toward others changes moving forward.
Enjoy!
Live Yoga Nidra Teacher Training
Salt Lake City, Utah Feb 7–9, 2020
The First Step: Yoga For The Heart
The First Step
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Photo at The First Step House by Chris Noble
For over a year I volunteered to teach a yoga class once a week to a group of men at a place called The First Step House. This was an institution established for men who had just come out of jail and who needed a positive first step into managing a new life outside of prison. At the First Step House, these guys, many of whom were court-ordered to be there, would receive group therapy and courses about things like anger management, personal finances, and how to get a job. The director of this facility was a student of mine and felt yoga could be a great skill that these men could use. So she required everyone going though this program to receive at least 4 sessions of group yoga.
Uneasy Beginnings
I remember showing up on my first morning, sometime in the late spring or early summer. I left my wallet locked in my car not knowing how cautious I should be about people who had just left the Big House. I walked into the large red-bricked building, an old renovated church, past a fat calico cat who looked at me like he owned the place. Inside, it smelled like bleach, bacon grease, and coffee. There was a scruffy man wearing a camo jacket and heavy boots standing at a kitchen window placing an order to a uniformed cook for some eggs and pancakes. I mingled around until I found the director; she was debriefing the staff for the day’s events in her office. “Oh Scott!” she said enthusiastically. “Everyone, I’d like you to meet our new yoga instructor. He’s going to be teaching every Wednesday morning.” I was greeted with several polite hellos.
After the meeting, the director showed me around the class rooms, therapy rooms, the grounds, and the kitchen and even invited me to order food there whenever I wanted. Finally she led me to a group of about 20 men in a large meeting room, all shuffling and slouching, consumed in the practiced art of killing time before some institutionalized activity.
“Gentlemen!” Sabrina said in a loud and cheery voice that both commanded attention and simultaneously demanded and conveyed respect. “This is Scott, our new yoga instructor.”
There was a long moment of uneasy quiet as this group of men shifted their eyes skeptically between Sabrina and me, processing the bomb that had just been dropped on them: they were now going to be required to practice yoga. A few less-than-subtle curses skittered around the room to which Sabrina paid no attention and instead marched out of the room leading me and the curmudgeonly group in tow.
She led us to a large shed-like structure behind the main building. Inside, there was industrial carpet on the floor, a few small windows, some fluorescent lights, and several chairs arranged a circle. We all began stacking chairs, some still complaining loudly at the fact that they had to do “@#$%ing YO-GA!” Everyone was instructed to grab a mat and sit on the floor which they did, noticeably uncomfortable with tight hips, curved backs, and stiff knees, vestiges of long years of bodily neglect and abuse.
I looked around and saw that many of these men with their military tattoos, dog-tags, and post-Vietnam-era chic apparel were veterans. A pang of bitter realization washed through me. It was a feeling that in some ways this country had forgotten and neglected these people and that blindness resulted in one way or other processing these people into our prisons. Yes, these men had made their own decisions but I wondered how many of these choices had been made as the result of a broken soul, horrific memories, and an impossible sacrifice for a country that all but shunned them when they came back from the living nightmare of Vietnam or the Middle East. I saw men almost void of consciousness, desperately trying to just make it for one more day.
Not all of them were veterans. Some of these men had been drug dealers, woman beaters, thieves, cheats, deserters, liars, and addicts. I stood there and looked around the room at these cut-throat, busted sons of America. This was their next step. This was their second chance, or their third or fourth. It didn’t matter. They were there and so was I. And what we all shared in common was that we were going to do yoga together in some shed with industrial carpet and stacked chairs, under garish fluorescent lighting and try to see what could come of it.
I stood at the front of the class and introduced myself. I explained who I was, why I think yoga is cool, and that I also like jazz and running and reading. I told them that I didn’t like yoga that much at first and that it took me a while to understand it enough to really love it. I shared how much I love the way it makes my body feel and how valuable it is to me to keep my body healthy in order to be a good vehicle of my mind and heart. I shared how well I’ve come to know my inner-self through this practice. My definition of yoga was very simple: understanding Self through listening; a union of body, mind, and heart.
Fixing The Broken
My introduction over, I asked if anybody had any injuries that I could be aware of and spent the next 10 minutes listening to almost every person in the room explain something like an injured back, a shattered elbow, or broken foot. Yoga suggests that everything is connected and in my mind I wondered if these broken bodies were perhaps scars of deeper wounds.
I think something happened to me as I stood there and listened to them describe their injuries. My fears and prejudices melted away and I didn’t see ex-cons anymore, I saw hurt people. Aren’t we all just bodies with hearts and minds doing our best to know ourselves and this world? Aren’t we all just trying to mend and move forward? My nervousness subsided a bit and suddenly I found myself caught up with an excitement to be there, to offer something that we all could share, a way to connect, a way to heal, a way to simply feel good in our bodies and maybe find some inner peace. I shared a few jokes and anecdotes. This lightened the mood and greased the resistance a little.
Then we started the practice with a simple focus on our breath and some easy breathing techniques which caused a sputtering of coughs and gasps. We moved our bodies in cat-cow position on hands and knees and mobilized the spine. Together, we moved the body through some slow and gentle sun salutations. We mobilized shoulders, wrists, hips, neck, knees, and ankles. When we did supine pigeon pose to loosen up tight hips, you’d have thought it was a dungeon of hell with all the groans and curses through clenched teeth. But they were doing it. And whether they realized it or not, the intensity of stretching such tight muscles entered them into a very deep practice of mindfulness.
I believe that there is scarcely anything in the world that hones one’s attention like pigeon pose, any of its incarnations, applied to tight hips. Pigeon: the fast-track to enlightenment! We finished our session with a rest as I led them through a guided meditation. After, I taught them the meaning of Namaste, an honoring salutation that acknowledges the common goodness in all of us. I bowed to them, offered a Namaste, and even received a few timid Namastes in return.
Shared Light
That started my year-plus stint at The First Step House. There were several different groups of men at the First Step House. I would meet with the same group each Wednesday for four weeks then change groups. Invariably the first session of each new group started with the same curses and objections but just as predicable came the subsequent sessions marked more and more acceptance, even happy anticipation about the practice. Yoga was helping their bodies to feel better, helping their minds to be more focused, and their hearts to be more calm.
We grew to trust each other. I cherished their demonstrative respect for me, a respect that came easily once they got to know me. I stopped leaving my wallet locked in the car. I would come in to the center on Wednesday mornings and on my way back to the yoga shed, several of the men who had been in my previous groups would enthusiastically greet me with a hello and handshake or high-five. They followed my instructions and asked some great questions. Some admitted it, some didn’t, but almost everyone grew to really love the practice. I’ll never forget the sight and sound of these gruff dudes, sitting the best they could cross-legged on the floor, eyes closed in a squint and hands to heart, chanting the most gravely OOOOmmmm ever heard on this side of steel bars and razor wire.
Thanks to the First Step House, I learned a lot about yoga and teaching yoga. I learned that yoga can touch anybody. I learned that more than being a fantastic teacher, yoga itself is the teacher. I learned that the power of yoga lies in its current application to the situation and time at hand. I learned to offer this practice to people in a way that meets them where they are.
My classes at The First Step House were the only classes I’ve taught where I instituted a 10-minute smoke break in the middle of class; perfectly appropriate. I learned that no matter how broken you might be this practice puts you on a pathway toward wholeness
Thank you, First Step House for all that you taught me. Though I wasn’t paid money, The First Step House gave me deep riches of yogic knowledge, insight to teaching, and a profound personal connection.
LUXURY YOGA RETREAT IN BORDEAUX, FRANCE
JUNE 13–19, 2020
A Radical Start to 2020
Will You Do Something Radical With Me?
Once I was on my way to a yoga class, stressed out because life had totally thrown me a curveball and I was completely unprepared for class. I was traveling to class with a friend and complained out loud, “Life has been so crazy this week that I have done exactly zero planning for this class and I have absolutely no idea what I’m going to say to these people!” She turned to me and told me something life-changing. She said, “ I don’t know why you haven’t figured this out yet but people don’t come to your classes because of what you say. They come because of who you are.” I sat quietly absorbing her words for a moment before blurting out, “Well, who the hell am I?!”
Since that moment, through practice and deepening life events, I’ve started to discover a thing or two about myself, a journey that I’m sure will never end. So far, along the way, I’ve discovered something crucial about myself that might be obvious to you. I’ve discovered that, and I’m not overselling it when I say it, the secrets of the Universe lie not outside of us but inside of us and we all must learn to go inside to discover who we are to uncover them. In fact, one could sum up most practices like meditation and yoga as simply practices that un-layer all the things that obfuscate what’s already inside of us. They are practices that help us to come to know ourselves, and that when we know Self, we know the Universe.
To this end, each one of us is on a hero’s journey. Our destiny, similar to heroes like Luke Skywalker or Harry Potter, is to ultimately discover that the secret to our power already exists inside of us, albeit perhaps in some latent, unrealized form. For us, we don’t need to fight Darth Vader or Lord Voldemort in order to discover who we truly are. Actually, what we must do to discover the truth is even more radical, more daring. We must be willing to sit, close our eyes, and journey inside. We must come to know ourselves through practices like meditation. I know, I know. For some of us, it would seem easier just to fight Lord Voldemort.
The world doesn’t need another Luke Skywalker or a Harry Potter. What the world desperately needs is for you to be your best self, totally alive and in love with the world.
Philosopher and theologian Howard Thurman said, “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and go do it, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
Howard Thurman
We come alive when we come to know ourselves and share whoever that is with the world. Above the temple gates at the Oracle of Delphi is inscribed the immortal words: “Know thyself.” I can think of no better way to know yourself and come alive than through a regular, simple meditation practice.
This is the reason I’m hosting my 31-Day Meditation Challenge, starting January 1, 2020. It’s meant to join a group of people together to help all of us start this next year decade from a place of grounded Self-knowledge and to share in global responsiveness, to empower ourselves with visions of what’s possible in our lives for the coming year and decade, and ultimately to source and share our eternal essence: love. This challenge helps and encourages you to start a simple, daily meditation practice of 15 minutes or more, using any style of meditation you like. If you've done this challenge in the past, I'm offer all new materials!
When you join, I’ll give you plenty of styles you can choose from including many of my recorded Yoga Nidra practices where all you have to do is lie down, close your eyes, and learn to wake up. We’ll even have some live, group meditations. All month long, I’ll support you with emails and with encouragement and information.
This challenge is perfect both for the novice as well as the experienced meditator. The challenge costs $31 and as an incentive to complete the challenge, if you meditate every day for 15 minutes or more, you have the option to get a 100% refund of your tuition. This will be fun, engaging, and necessary.
Consider inviting other people who you’d like to be in your meditation tribe to join because hey, this is going to be a party and it’s nice to have a team for accountability and added encouragement.
Over the next 7 days, I’m going to be sending a few more emails that offer thoughts and ideas about the importance and some stunning statistics about meditation, all to hopefully encourage you to continue or start a regular and simple meditation practice.
Please join this radical meditation movement. Start this new year and decade with some grounded mindfulness. Please join my 31-Day Meditation Challenge.
Meditation For Stress
Hey, right before I published this I realized that my friend and fellow teacher Rachel Posner wrote a great blog post about stress. I encourage you to also look at her blog. She’s a formidable teacher, very skilled and gentle and I think you’ll like it. My article is about using practices like meditation for stress relief.
Power Over Stress
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I believe that humans are often more powerful than we can imagine and that we have much more control than we think over common but debilitating emotions like stress. Part of our control over stress lies within our ability to understand and experience the most real part of ourselves, a part that we may readily access, one that is wholly unaffected by emotions, the part that many call the True Self. Learning to control stress might simply require one essential practice, a practice that is synonymous with our True Self, the practice of Awareness.
“Yeah, that’s great wisdom, Mr. Miyagi, but what does that really mean and how does being ‘aware’ help me not feel so much stress? Even this conversation is stressing me out.”
Ancient Wisdom
Well, there’s some ancient yoga wisdom that offers some pretty mind-blowing and yet direct, cut-to-the-chase ideas about this topic. And what amazes me is how often it seems that modern science, psychology, and spirituality are trying to catch up to some of what people figured out thousands of years ago. Sure, they hadn’t discovered Oreos yet but… Anyway, some of this ancient wisdom I’m talking about is found in the Vedas.
So, the Vedas are volumes of ancient texts from India. One of the Vedic teachings that I love so much is called the Gayatri Mantra and it broadly explains how to dissolve stress (and other debilitating emotions) by realizing that we all come from one, expansive Source. It explains that if we could truly understand and experience our True Self, that of Source, we wouldn’t experience ourselves as stress, but rather we would see ourselves as the very thing that we seek: peace, love, and joy. The Vedas also teach us that our true identity is that of Awareness itself, the nature of which is boundless peace, love, and joy.
Most human beings, across all time and distance, myself included, all seem to suffer from the same fundamental problem: feeling separate from Source. Truly I believe that the key message that most spiritual and religious traditions try to point to is the quintessential teaching that we all come from Source. That and perhaps the best way to describe what Source is could be summed up simply as love.
Stressed
In part, our difficulty in experiencing our True Selves, that of pure Awareness, peace, love, joy and all that, is because we too often identify with things like stress. We may not do this consciously, but when we feel stress, we often feel that stress is somehow what we are. Our language even reinforces this. We often say, “I’m so stressed, ” when it would be more inline with our True Self to say, “I’m so aware of stress.”
Many of us have come to regard stress as a normal part of life. While stress may be common, stress is nonetheless fundamentally contrary to our True Self. The problem is that emotions like stress feel real, especially when, oh, I don’t know, it’s raining outside, you’re late getting your toddler to school, and you’re riding on a jam-packed tram filled beyond capacity without any seats left making the ideal moment for your kid to start throwing a grand mal temper tantrum which in turn elicits the icy glares from a mob with hundreds of eyes, people who are uniformly doubting your parenting skills, meanwhile Drunk Guy, reeking of booze and piss, is pressed hotly against your side and breathing in your face as he gratuitously offers you his sage and honed parenting skills.
(Let me pause to breath for a second.)
More about stress… Stress is part of our ego, the part of our being that is not our True Self. Our ego experiences all the transient parts of our being, transient things like emotions. But before we start hating on the ego, consider that the ego actually has a very important role. The ego is meant to help reveal the REAL and permanent part of our being, our Awareness. Instead of identifying as stress we can use stress as something to be aware of, something that helps us to practice Awareness, that illuminates our Awareness, not something to latch onto like it were a life raft in the ocean of existence that is drawing you down into a vortex of despair.
Meditation for Stress
Practices like yoga, meditation, and especially Yoga Nidra, help us gain a facility to actually welcome, recognize, and witness things like stress as nothing more than just another thing in this vast Universe, something to be aware of. Once we can learn to witness these parts of our ego, parts like stress, we can separate ego from our True Self and open to experience our birthright of peace, love, and joy. After all, like ancient wisdom says, these good qualities are truly what we are and identifying as them is really the most natural thing ever. So easy.
“That sounds great but after practicing this magical ‘Awareness’ I imagine that I’m still going to feel stress from time to time.”
Probably, but with practice you might not feel stress in the same way and you may not feel it as often or as fiercely. In time, stress may even become something you can merely experience with a sense of interest and curiosity instead of resistance and aversion.
When you experience your True Self as Awareness through practices like Yoga Nidra, your entire perspective of life can change, especially your perspective about what stresses you out. Stress can become just a thing, not your entire world. In truth, you may even develop a feeling of gratitude for emotions like stress because they may give you a great opportunity to practice Awareness. Through practicing and identifying as Awareness you may become unidentified with stress and can thus allow that misguided life raft to just slip away with the next wave of thought or emotion that floats by.
Yoga Nidra is one of my favorite ways of developing this skill of experiencing yourself as Awareness. It’s an excellent practice for learning to control stress because its superpower is relaxation into Awareness. Modern psychology tells us that we can’t feel relaxed and stressed at the same time. So, when I lead a Yoga Nidra practice, I deliberately lead students through a deepening Awareness practice that makes them super relaxed. Then we practice witnessing, either by my suggestions or whatever spontaneously arises, everything and anything that comes up, including emotions like stress, as simply another thing to be aware of. With a foundation of relaxed Awareness, you experience things like stress with an entirely new perspective and it breaks the Full Nelson grip that stress can sometimes have on our lives.
We may not be completely stress free after our first session, but it’s quite possible that even after one session you’ll finish even feeling much more relaxed than you were before the session and with a different perspective about not only what stresses you out, but even the idea of stress itself. Plus, then the more you practice, the more you will find that in time your entire relationship to stress has evolved to be much more manageable.
But don’t take my word for it. Try it for yourself. I’ve made a free Stress Free Yoga Nidra practice that I’d like to offer to you for free. This guided meditation lasts about 36 minutes and is designed specifically to manage stress. This is one of the tracks will be on my upcoming volume of Yoga Nidra recordings that I’m busy working on and will come out in a few weeks. This volume of Yoga Nidra recordings will also include a practice on working through grief, healing, creating abundance, getting grounded, setting goals, working with depression, and much more. I thought I’d give you a free practice to see what this volume of recordings is all about and because hey, the world could be a little bit better with you operating at your best and less stressed.
Truly my mission in teaching yoga and meditation is to help people be their best selves so they can go out into the world and kick ass at whatever they do be that babysitting or brain surgery.
I’d also love to hear the other positive ways that you’ve discovered to help you manage stress. Please leave a comment below
And hey, if you choose not to listen to my completely fantastic Yoga Nidra recording, well I’m not going to stress over it.
Photo by David Newkirk
By the way, my live, online Yoga Nidra session happening this and every Sunday (9 am MST) is devoted to the theme: Breaking the Stress Cycle. Please join me for a live Yoga Nidra session devoted to managing stress. I record each session so even if you can’t make the time, register ($12) and you’ll still receive the recordings.
Also, I’m still offering everyone who preorders my new book, Practical Yoga Nidra ($12.99), one free, online class. If you haven’t already and would like to, I’d be honored if you would click the picture of my book below to preorder your copy which comes out Dec. 10th. Send me a screenshot of your purchase before 9 am on Sunday morning and I’ll add you to the class roster.
Hey, everyone, I know that stress is a real and serious thing for many of us, myself included. I know for me that I’m a much better version of myself when I’m not hamstrung by stress. I really hope that you have good ways of managing stress. If you’re game, give Yoga Nidra a shot.
Blessings!
The Poison That Makes Us Holy
Happy Monday! I hope your week is starting off marvelously.
This morning I dropped Elio off from school and then decided to walk around a bit to record the audio of this post. Ultimately, I decided not to use that recording because there was too much traffic and it was too distracting so I re-recorded this and I think that is better.
Elio is getting used to his new school and is still having a little bit of a problem using the bathroom by himself so some mornings, like this morning, I drop him off at school, go to the gym or do some work at a cafe, then head back to school to encourage him to use the bathroom.
As I was walking around this morning, not far from Elio’s school, there is a beautiful, modern cathedral here in Nice. It’s got a very unique, rounded architecture and it’s gleaming while. This cathedral is dedicated to the Saint of Joan of Arc.
If you don’t remember the story of Joan of Arc, she was a peasant girl in the 1400s who as a teenager received a revelation from God that she was supposed to lead the French army against the English and the Burgundians, a French dynasty who were at the time in league with the English and who today produce lovely wines— but that’s neither here nor there.
So against all rationale, the prince Charles of Valois agreed to allow Joan of Arc to lead the army. She did. They won. She was lauded and revered. Unfortunately, about a year later, she was captured by the English and the Burgundians and was burned at the stake as a heretic. She’s been held as someone very special to the spirit of France and it wasn’t until the 1920s that she was actually canonized and considered a saint and this church is dedicated to her.
I’m so happy that I walked by this church because it relates to the myth I want to tell today:
Today, I want to tell my rendition of the ancient Hindu myth about the Asuras and the Devas.
Long ago, in time out of mind, there were two groups of beings, the Asuras and the Devas. There couldn’t be a different sort of people. The asuras were earthly people, thought mostly of themselves, were a bit selfish. They probably loved Nascar, ate pork rinds, and didn’t recycle. The Devas on the other hand were beings that were very heavenly and always thinking of their inner divine nature. I imagine them dressed in gossamer white clothing, subsisting on tofu and vegetable broth, meditating for several hours a day, and leaving behind a faint smell of patchouli or incense whenever they left a room.
Well, those two kinds of being were about as opposite as you could imagine but they both wanted one thing and that was Soma. Soma was the elixur of eternal life. The Asuras wanted it because it felt so good to be eternal and the Devas wanted it so they could further devote themselves to the Divine. Now, the only way to get Soma was to ask Vishnu and if on the off chance that he granted you to have it, he would allow Lakshmi, the goddess of fortune and gifts to bestow it upon you.
So united in this common desire, the Asuras and the Devas got together and timidly asked Vishnu if they could have some Soma. He agreed but told them what they must do to get it. He was going to lend them his Sesha, Vishnu’s giant snake. They were to wrap this snake around a mountain which was to rest atop the giant tortoise Korma. If you’ve ever done Kormasana in yoga class, this is where that gets its name. Once the snake was wrapped around the mountain and placed on top of the Korma’s shell, they were to pull back and forth and oscillate it enough that they should somehow get the Soma. Grateful, the Asuras and the Devas agreed and began their task.
The Devas being smarter than the Asuras opted to take the relatively benign tail of the snake, which had but four ends which some Sanskrit scholars say relate to the 4 bases of DNA structure, something that the ancients discovered long before Watson, Crick, both of whom studied the work of their colleague Franklin. The Asuras therefore received the head end of the sesha and were blasted by countless heads of a snake, each one shooting fiery blasts like a dragon.
The Asuras and the Devas began to pull on the sesha with all of their might and in their lust for Soma, they started to pull so hard that the sesha, as strong and divine as a character as he may be, became nonetheless very ill and began to vomit venomous bile which started to cover and poison the entire earth. Seeing the problem, the Asuras and Devas stopped their movement and decided that something must be done before the entire earth is engulfed with this poison.
They weren’t about to go back to Vishnu. He was kind enough to let them have the chance to get Soma in the first place. They didn’t want to return to Vishnu and tell him how in their blind lust for Soma, they made his snake sick and now the entire earth was starting to be covered in poisonous puke. Instead, they importuned Shiva. They asked him if he could help them out.
Siva surveyed the situation and gathered up all of the bile and drank it, neither swallowing it to digest it nor spitting it back up. Siva held it in his throat and sanctified it, turning his throat blue.
Saved, the Asuras and the Devas continued their task, this time taking great care to have a balance between steadiness and ease. After they developed a good rhythm, eventually the sea began to boil and riches started popping up out of the ocean. Soma was about to come at any minute.
Vishnu decided to give them one last temptation to see if they were worthy of the Soma and he sent a temptations out to see if the Asuras and Devas really had purity in their hearts to receive the Soma. I imagine Vishnu sending onto the beach a bunch of speedo and bikini-clad partiers, barbecues wafting the smell of rib-eye steaks, not to mention volleyball nets, beers, and music. To the Devas he sent over all the unicorn amulets, treasure troves of yoga pants, sensible shoes, and all organic produce that a healthy, spiritual person could ever want.
Well, despite all of their efforts to get to that moment, the Asuras caved and headed to the beach for beers and babes. The Devas stayed and soon Lakshmi gave them each a single drop of Soma which turned them into immortal beings like angels.
I love myths like that because we can interpret them in many ways. They speak to a truth that is large enough mean something different fo whomever hears it, regardless of spiritual orientation, practice, discipline, or period of life.
I love the idea in this myth about the balance of steadiness and ease. In the Yoga Sutras, the book where we get a lot of the philosophy of yoga from, there are really very few instructions for how we are to practice yoga, the physical practice. It does say, however that no matter what, you’ve got to find the balance between steadiness and ease. Whatever your physical, spiritual, and I would even say political practice might be, this story illustrations the value of balance. What’s more is how when you’re trying to improve your situation but approach your improvement with a fundamental lack of balance, how that can make things worse off than they were before.
And when things are bad, and even when they seem like they are going to poison the entire world, like the snake’s venomous puke, that somehow the Divine can help you hold that in such a way as to sanctify it
You’ve probably heard me mention this more times than you can count but it is a truth that has become imperative to my own personal spiritual evolution, and that is Leonard Cohen’s lyric from his song Anthem that says, Ring the bells that still can ring, forget your perfect offering, there is a crack in everything and that’s how the light gets in. This says that just like the poison of whatever may befall us, we become sanctified, the light gets in, when we learn to hold our imperfections. That it’s because of these faults, this brokenness, this poison, that we are rendered holy.
CLICK ABOVE TO LEARN ABOUT MY LUXURY RETREAT AT A BORDEAUX CHATEAU 2020
It makes me think of our situation with Elio, learning to use the bathroom by himself at school. How he is struggling being the only kid at school who doesn’t speak French and how he is learning to have more independence and things and how we are the unique family at school because we don’t quite understand exactly how things work yet, at least not like the other French families. But how me going back to school is strengthening him and teaching him and how it gives me an opportunity to build a rapport with the directorice of the school and talk with his teachers regularly. This is building a special relationship between our family and the school.
It also makes me think about Joan of Arc and how she was killed for fundamentally backward, misogynist, and in my mind evil reasons, but how her spirit has endured and how she’s given hope and courage to countless French people and how she was like the original Wonder Woman in some ways and that she’s become a divine symbol which celebrates a woman’s power, intuition, and spirit and which is so strong that it’s still celebrated 600 years later.
I hope you enjoyed the myth. I’d love to hear about what you heard in this myth.
I hope that you can find ways in your life to celebrate balance in all of your practices. I hope that you’ll be able to find the divinity in the challenges that beset you and see how that all of our challenges are making us into the greater angels of our True Nature.
I hope you have a great week. Please stay tuned for some Yoga Nidra offerings I am going to announce coming up.
Global Story Jam
Photo by Sarah Wolfe
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I hope your week is starting off well. I hope you’re full of love and goodness and aware of your own innate awesomeness.
Terrible working conditions.
Here in Nice, it's starting to become autumn, my favorite season. Temperatures are still wonderful, hovering around the mid-70s. A little crisp in the morning, but often times I’ll be sitting outside writing at a cafe at 9 am sans jacket and it nonetheless feels balmy.
It’s feeling more and more like home in Nice. I loved going back to the states last month to teach and things but I gotta admit, it was great to get back to Nice. You know, moving to France has been much, much more work than being on vacation to France. Figuring out how to actually live in a new place has been sometimes difficult. Getting the essentials set up like establishing a bank account, getting an apartment, and enrolling Elio to school have been sometimes been bureaucratic nightmares. The stories I could share... But now, it feels like we got that stuff worked out and things are moving in a groove and I'm just really grateful to be here.
This week, I'm thinking about the end goal of yoga which is to yoke yourself to all things and in truth, come to know yourself as One. Seems like a lofty endeavor but I would proffer that the better you come to know your self, the more you'll see how similar you are to everyone around you—a unique expression of something vast and beautiful. As you come to know yourself, you'll start to see parts of yourself in everyone and everything.
Maybe this is why I love stories so much. There are few better ways to explore the our mutual connections by sharing and receiving each others stories. In an age where hate and division runs rampant, I believe that it's hard to hate someone when you know their story. I believe that stories dissolve hate by giving us a snapshot of the human behind every person's experience. I believe that human beings love to tell stories because it reminds us of who we are fundamentally.
When I was in New Jersey and New York last month offering workshops and visiting family, I had the great pleasure to be interviewed on Tiffany Curren's incredible podcast called Access + Expand. We share stories about what it means to teach yoga and mediation, the practicalities of being conscious beings, how to engage with our own humanity through meditation, yoga and breathwork, and simply about living a good life. I hope you'll take a moment to check it out.
And speaking of stories, NEXT Saturday, October 19th from 10 am to 12 pm MST I'm going to host my first ever virtual GLOBAL STORY JAM. This idea is inspired by Salt Lake City's own The Bee, an incredible storytelling event that I've had the pleasure of attending on several occasions. I have been so inspired by The Bee that I wanted to host my own storytelling event so last year I hosted a really special evening of storytelling where I told some heart-touching and hilarious stories about dying, deep revelations, and even one about why Heavy Metal matters. We laughed, cried, and had truly special evening. The picture at the top of this email or blog post was taken by Sarah Wolfe at that event.
I really wanted to do something like that again and being in France, I thought that we could do it live and virtual through an online platform called Zoom. This lets you join in to listen and share from wherever you are in the world. This is going to be so cool, please consider joining us.
I’m sure you have a story to tell. And if you don’t want to share a story, you’re still welcome to join and listen to others’ story. This will be a unique opportunity to connect to people world-wide.
The theme of the event is, SHOCKED: Electrifying Stories About Surprises, Revelations, and Rude Awakenings.
Here's how this works...
Click the register button below to register for the event ($10). Once you register, you’ll get a welcome email with some of the finer details, including the Zoom link. If you'd like to share a story, and I hope that you will, please either respond to this email or the welcome email and tell me that that you'd like to share a story. If we have more storytellers than there is time for I’ll pick random storytellers to share their story with us.
We'll all connect on Zoom at the same time. Zoom is easy to use. Each story teller will have 5 minutes to tell the their story. Around the world, we will listen and silently root for others as they tell their stories. We'll all do the same for you. This will be fun, funny, touching, and inspiring. Join me! You can enjoy this from the comfort of your own home.
Like they say on one of my favorite storytelling podcasts, “I hope you have a story-worthy week.”
I love to get your emails so if you have a great story and are NOT planning on joining me at the event or just want to drop a line and say hello, I’d love to hear from you.
Luxury Yoga Retreat at a Bordeaux Château
There’s still a spot for you!
A Week of Yoga, Meditation, Luxury Accommodations and Exquisite Vineyards
June 13–19 2020
Yoga Nidra: Yoga for Anxiety
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Yoga Nidra is a relaxing form of guided meditation that helps you feel amazing. Better than amazing, Yoga Nidra helps you feel like your True Self, the qualities of which can only be described as invincible, expansive, and limitless-calm. Yoga Nidra helps us to see correctly again, in part by using things like emotions, even anxiety, as catalysts to experience our True Selves. We’re hardwired to feel this way all the time, except somehow we all allow things like thoughts, sensations, and emotions to cloud our vision of our True Self. For anyone who is interested in learning to become a certified Yoga Nidra teacher, please read to the end.
“To catch the mind and keep it still,
Is no small problem for my porous will;
As many times as I shut it down,
Unceasing thoughts on me rebound
In youth I tried through alcohol,
To ease my stress and cool my gall;
In later years I turned to grass
The effects were good – but did not last.
At last with fading hopes I turned,
To Eastern paths, and my soul yearned
To scale the mystic heights of bliss.
Alas, no easy method this.
And now with age and turmoil weary,
All that’s left me is this query;
Will heart break or mind implode,
Before my vrittis do nirode.”
Yoga is defined in the Yoga Sutras as the cessation of the fluctuations of the mind, or to come into complete stillness and unperturbed by disruptions of thoughts, sensations, and emotions. Nidra is a state of mind. It’s that interesting liminal, hypnagogic state between waking and dreaming consciousness. Yoga Nidra, therefore is the practice of coming into the Awareness of our True Self through achieving this Nidra state in deep relaxation.
What is Yoga Nidra?
Yoga Nidra is a deep form of self-discovery, like meditation, where you experience your utmost nature of being. It's a very relaxing way of attuning your awareness to all things. Indeed it is the practice of experiencing yourself as Awareness itself.
Yoga Nidra does this by training us to relax and practice deep awareness. In fact, it helps us actually experience ourselves as Awareness itself. According to Yoga Nidra philosophy, our True Nature is Awareness. We feel into our True Nature by learning to relax and simply observe whatever presents itself to us at the moment, be that a thought, a sound, or an emotion or anything else. When you learn to merely observe something rather than react to it, you gain a universal perspective about it and it doesn’t have the power to control you because you’re not identified as it. This is particularly useful for emotions.
Yoga Nidra For Anxiety
Modern psychology helps us to understand how this works, particularly vis-à-vis our emotions. In the late 1950's, Joseph Wolpe, a leading behavior therapist at Stanford University, added to Pavlov's previous ground-breaking work on conditioning by helping those with anxiety using counter-conditioning. Wolpe demonstrated that the symptoms of anxiety were greatly reduced or eradicated when things that would otherwise stress people were presented systematically, bit by bit and paired with a relaxation response.* He showed that anxiety and relaxation cannot be present simultaneously. Therefore, if you can achieve deep relaxation and practice Awareness, then slowly and gradually present to your Awareness what triggers your emotions, you you experience yourself and identify as Awareness that is momentarily experiencing emotion, not emotion itself.
Ego vs. True Self
In our quest to understand ourselves, we tend to identify with anything that seems real. To our rational consciousness, what we can feel, see, smell, etc. seems real. However, all these things are inevitably locked in the realm of the changeable, the Ego. A misapprehension of what I think I am, a definition I learned from Eckhart Tolle in his book A New Earth
Anything you identify with tends to perpetuate. After all, we are hardwired to stay alive and if in someway we misunderstand our being as an emotion, even though it may not be our favorite emotion, we keep wrapping it around ourselves metaphorically, subconsciously afraid to let it go for fear that we will no longer exist without it.
But Yoga Nidra helps you experience and identify as Awareness that is momentarily experiencing emotion, not emotion itself. Then when emotion arises, it doesn’t have the power to overtake you. You see it as just one of the other things in the Universe that has an orbit.
It’s just like everything else in this Universe, making a drive-by along its own orbit.
I invite you to experience your own True Being with Yoga Nidra. I created a free learning module that uses Yoga Nidra to help you with stress. I loved putting it together and I hope it helps if you are working with anxiety.
Online Yoga Nidra Teacher Training
If you are interested in learning how to lead yourself and others through this transformational practice, please consider registering for my Online Yoga Nidra Teacher Training program. By the end of this training you’ll be prepared to teach Yoga Nidra to help countless students discover their True Selves and see beyond momentary emotions like stress and anxiety.
If you know someone who is working with stress or anxiety or who is interested in Yoga Nidra, please forward this. Thank you!
* Wolpe, J. (1958). Psychotherapy by reciprocal inhibition. Stanford. Stanford University Press.
