Learning to Fail

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Some of the greatest lessons in my life have been due to my failures. You? What are some of your BEST failures, I’m talking business, school, relationships, the whole gamut? I guarantee they have also been some of your best teachers, even if we can’t see that . . . yet.

Photo by Alex Adams

Freaked to Fail

In high school I remember being so incredibly afraid to one day open my own business because…. what if I FAILED! Of course I had an extremely limited idea of what success looked like and what it took to find success.

Well, fast forward a few decades and I’ve opened and failed businesses. I've learned not to be afraid of failure. Sure, it's hard and nobody want's to fail but I’ve picked myself up from some very hard places and moved on. It's was because of some of these failures in many aspects of life that I’ve learned what I need to do in order to enjoy some great success in so many avenues of life, including making a living doing what I absolutely LOVE which is teaching yoga and meditation. Making a living doing what I love= one big, fat success.

I think about all kinds of things I've failed at from relationships to jobs to ideas. Each one has taught me an invaluable lessons. I’ve since learned not to be afraid of failures. They are powerful lessons that have shaped me into who I am today.

One of My Favorite Failures

When I was 19 I needed to earn some money for college so I was determined to do whatever it took, no matter how unpleasant the job was. Well, I got a temp job working on a construction site. I was utterly horrible at construction but was too damn proud to quit. Eventually the foreman fired me for my ineptitude. At the time I was incensed but I later realized how much of a favor he did for me. I wasn't serving ANYONE at that job, least of all myself. He freed me to go and look for my next job, one that I did so well that in a matter of months, the owner of the small company actually asked me if I wanted to become partners.

My Yoga Nidra Teacher Teaching Taught Me to Fail

I used to own a few yoga studios. They both failed. One of the highlights of owning these studios was when I was able to proudly host one of my greatest Yoga Nidra teachers, Dr. Richard Miller, for a weekend of workshops. Ironically, despite the great success of the workshops, he was the last big event we hosted before we had to announce that we were closing our doors. Concluding the weekend of workshops was an intimate dinner with a few teachers and Richard Miller. I came a few minutes late because I had to have a meeting with my entire staff letting them know that we were going to be closing our doors. When I told this unfortunate truth to Richard Miller, he leaned in close to me and without hesitation said, “congratulations!”

At the time I was taken aback, but with reflection the lessons I’ve learned from that experience are like gold in my hand. Not being weighed down by trying to make a brick-and-mortar business stay afloat has freed me up to concentrate on projects like my Online Yoga Nidra Teacher Training, Yoga Teacher Mentor Program, and projects like my Yoga Nidra Scripts booklet.

When I look back at owning the studios, I met my wife at that yoga studio and I often tell her that if I went through all that stress, heartache, and trouble only to have met here then it would have been worthing it. That’s true but the incredible gifts I’ve learned extend beyond just finding the love of my life. Ironically, I’ve learned so much about owning and running a business by all the ways that my previous business didn’t work. Both studios I opened are STILL running, but with different owners. I suppose I should be proud to have helped created such beautiful places to practice yoga. When I roll by those studios, I think, “Good on ya! I hope you’re doing well,” and “MAN! I’m happy not to own those anymore.”

Failures are perhaps some of our biggest teachers so maybe we don’t have to be so afraid of them. Maybe we can even have fun with them and dare I say, even be grateful for them. Inevitably, they help us evolve into into our highest being.

What are the failures you’re grateful for?

Yoga Nidra Scripts and Yoga Nidra Trainings

Why Yoga Nidra Scripts?

I’ve been creating Yoga Nidra scripts and Yoga Nidra Trainings for years and would love to share a little about what Yoga Nidra is, how it can heal, the value of a script, and how to move beyond the script to truly meet the needs of yourself and your students.

Yoga Nidra is the transformational so-called “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. The fact that Yoga Nidra is so easy to practice and often leaves practitioners feeling rested, illuminated, and calm, makes it a popular, simple, and effective way of exploring one’s higher Self. Yoga Nidra is like napping your way to enlightenment!

Yoga Nidra may be easy and relaxing to practice but teaching it effectively can be difficult. I’ve spent many years, and countless hours 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. In the spirit of helping others learn to teach Yoga Nidra quicker than it took me, I recently took 20 Yoga Nidra practices that I thought could be helpful on a broad variety of subjects and compiled 20 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.

The Healing Power of Yoga Nidra

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. Doing so heals what I feel is the fundamental human problem which is feeling separate from Source.

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 this volume of Yoga Nidra scripts.

These Yoga Nidra scripts are valuable because a Yoga Nidra facilitator works hard to create the right conditions for relaxation and the layered Awareness to occur. Plus, once that state is successfully achieved, a facilitator can then use their knowledge of the mayakoshas (layers of the ego) to effectively work on whatever needs attention, be that something physical, energetic, mental, or even spiritual or unconscious. I’ve organized these scripts in a way that hopefully makes that process automatic and easy.

Yoga Nidra Training

Perhaps you’d like to learn how to create your own scripts or learn to improvise a Yoga Nidra class to meet particular needs and learn how to lead yourself through a Yoga Nidra practice without using a script. Reading a script might be perfect for you as you learn to find your own voice teaching Yoga Nidra. I truly believe that each teacher has a unique quality about them and a special ability to benefit the lives of the students they come in contact with. There’s really nobody else who can teach like you do. While a Yoga Nidra facilitator can be skillful or not skillful about leading the practice, there’s no “right” way to teach. There are certain important principles about what Yoga Nidra is and what the practice is pointing to. Once you understand that, you’ll find your own way to arrive there and will be able to lead your students there effectively using your own voice. This is why I’ve developed in-person and online Yoga Nidra trainings.

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 my 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. The aim for my trainings is to help those who are passionate (or even curious) about facilitating Yoga Nidra and learning to move beyond these scripts and create their own scripts as well as conduct 1:1 Yoga Nidra Dyads, a completely improvised experience based on the real-time awareness of their students.

In my latest edition of my online Yoga Nidra training, I’ve included a PDF of over 100 pages of Yoga Nidra scripts to the training to help teachers begin to lead effective Yoga Nidra classes right away while they are learning to find their own voice.