Yoga Nidra: A Bridge to Inner-Wisdom

Yoga Nidra is a fascinating form of meditation. It’s different than many other forms of meditation in part because it’s a guided, practitioners are encouraged to lie down on the floor and close their eyes, and because it uses relaxation—not the effort of focus—to help practitioners arrive to the state of being identified as Awareness itself, rather that what you’re aware of.

One of the most fascinating things about Yoga Nidra is that it acts like a bridge, connecting seemingly separate parts of our being so that we can experience the non-dual part of us, that which eternal, the grand Singularity of the Universe, Awareness itself. Stay with me…

Yoga Nidra bridges the waking and dreaming mind. In fact, Yoga Nidra means the practice of coming into Oneness (Yoga) by using the Nidra (sleeping) state of mind. While Nidra is often translated as sleep, in actuality it means something closer to daydream, specifically that hypnagogic, liminal state between waking and dreaming consciousness.

Yoga Nidra acts like a bridge between your infinite and finite parts of being so you can experience the transcendent feeling of being BOTH an infinite being, Source, the Everything of the Universe AND a finite expression of Source that has a body, opinions, and has to wake up early on Tuesdays cuz it’s your turn to carpool the kids to school.

Using this in-between state of consciousness, Yoga Nidra also helps to bridge your conscious and unconscious mind. Sometimes when you build the bridge between these two states of your consciousness, the two sides can have a conversation together and your conscious mind can sometimes hear your own deep inner wisdom speaking from deep within your unconscious mind.

Yoga Nidra has taught me volumes about myself. It’s help me to bridge the gap between my practical and spiritual self, helped me to bridge the gap between feeling separate from and one with the Universe, and because of the bridge it’s given my conscious and unconscious mind to converse, I’ve learned some fascinating things about myself taught to me from my own deeper inner-wisdom.

Lastly, one of the coolest things about Yoga and Yoga Nidra is that it’s not giving you anything that you don’t already possess. These practices merely uncover the blinders from you seeing your True Self.

May we always be searching for our most true, infinite, and wise self. If you’re interested, above is a free Yoga Nidra recording that leads you to hear the wise inner teacher inside of you.

Enjoy and please tell me what you think.

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Manifesting with Yoga Nidra

Click here to access Yoga Nidra for Manifesting

(about 30 minutes)

I used to be so skeptical about the notion of “manifesting.” This of course was coming from the mind set that I had no control over the Universe, that I was merely a pawn in the game of something much bigger than I could possibly imagine. But the more I practice Yoga Nidra, known as the so-called yoga of sleep, the more I connect with a felt sense of Source and therefore understand myself as Source. The more I understand myself as Source the more I experience myself as the Universe and not just controlled by it. Suddenly manifesting doesn’t seem like so much of a fantasy and more of my mission as the Universe itself.

Understanding Myself as Source

The Gayatri Mantra is an ancient text, thousands of years old, contained in the Rig Veda—an old, old, text— and basically states that everything comes from Source and if I were to really understand that, I’d see that I’m basically no different than anything else in the Universe and therefore, I would BE the very thing that I otherwise felt like I lacked. This is one thing to understand philosophically or intellectually, but quite another thing to truly come to know this truth. Essentially, this is the end-game of Yoga—Samadhi, the experience of Oneness, to enter into the grand Singularity of all things. What we practice when we do yoga asana (poses) or practices like Yoga Nidra, is to create the conditions necessary for the EXPERIENCE of yoga to occur, to truly experience ourselves like the Gayatri Mantra says, as Source.

I’d argue that we’ve all at one time or other felt what it’s like to be Source. It’s that feeling when you touch the eternal when someone is born or dies or you brush up somehow with that other world in nature, for example. Source is our origin so we all seem to be reaching for it over the next horizon. When we practice yoga and Yoga Nidra we touch upon Source as we come to experience ourselves as Awareness through deep presence. In those moments we get the feeling that we are both the infinite Source and a finite individual expression of Source waking up to know itself as Source. We experience the paradox of these two realities simultaneously. With this feeling of being everything, Source, there is nothing we need, nothing we aren’t already, and nothing we can’t do.

Sankalpa: The Door To Wholeness

The Universe and everything in it exists as a giant YES. Yoga and meditation practitioners can leverage this Universal yes through their Sankalpa to manifest what they’d like to see in their life. Sankalpa is a Sanskrit word meaning your seed of intention and often yoga and meditation practitioners state their Sankalpa as a positive statement of truth at the beginning of their practice to dedicate their practice and to open to the possibility of greater clarity by using the mechanism of practice to find illumination. By stating something that is true about where you are now in relationship to where you would like to be, gives the Universe a clear bulls-eye to help manifest the thing you desire and to show you that somehow you already have what you desire. Some great examples of Sankalpas are, “I have everything inside of me that I need for ________,” or “I am on the road to ___________,” or “The Universe wants to bless me with ________.” These are both optimistic and yet realistic, our eternal mind and conscious mind can both get onboard with this statement. Plus, the part of us that is Source within us only understands yes and now so to speak to the Source within you, it’s helpful to formulate your Sankalpa in this way. Your Sankalpa is a way of knowing yourself as Source and as you do, you will find yourself more and more at one with the thing you desire. On more practical terms, you tend to lean toward whatever you focus on. If you’re constantly thinking of what’s positive about what you desire, you’ll most often make great strides along that path. Truly, you’ll look back and see that it was through your apparent lack that you came to know yourself as already complete and whole.

Seeing The Stars

A few months ago, my wife and I decided to put this manifesting business to the test. We were living in France and relying 100% on my monthly online sales for our financial subsistence. For some reason, I’d experienced a sharp decline in sales from the previous months and we decided to try manifest what we felt we needed. So we got really basic and made a simple poster with the numbers 1–10 on it. We divided the amount of money we felt we needed into 10 segments and bought some gold stars so that every time we made 1/10 of what we needed, we could simply put a star on the poster. Basic but effective. Knowing that seeing is believing, together we had a visualization ritual where we visualized exactly what it feels like to succeed in our goal. We envisioned ourselves celebrating having reached our goal with a bottle of champagne on the beach. We visualized our success by using all of our senses, how the champagne would taste, the sound of the waves, the feeling of holding hands on the beach, etc. At the time, I was thinking to myself that while this goal was kinda shooting for the stars, it was nonetheless possible. To cut to the chase, with only 2 weeks to meet our goal, on the last day of the month we had posted not only all 10 stars but had acquired an additional 3 stars on the poster! We succeeded with 33% more than we had even hoped for.

As you engage in the practice of yoga, meditation, and of life, I encourage you to remember that you are Source and as such there’s nothing you can’t do. Leverage the Universal YES to power your intention to show yourself in very practical and real ways all the ways that you are already whole and to help you Universe bless you with what you feel you need in your life.

Please enjoy this free Yoga Nidra recording above (guided meditation), dedicated to manifesting whatever you feel you need in your life.

Blessings!

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Luxury Château Yoga Retreat

Bordeaux, France June 13–19, 2020

Yoga Nidra Script

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Yoga Nidra Scripts

Over 100 pages! Only $39

ownCLICK THE GRAPHIC FOR MORE INFORMATION ON THE SCRIPTS

We all know that practicing Yoga Nidra is easy but facilitating a great class that doesn’t put your students to sleep (in the wrong way) is very difficult. This is why I’ve made this booklet of specialized, powerful, and unique Yoga Nidra scripts for you to use right away.

Teach Expert Yoga Nidra Classes, Today!

The Yoga Nidra Scripts in This Book:

Practices runs between 15–35 minutes long.

• 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

Supplement your Yoga Nidra teaching with these effective and engaging Yoga Nidra scripts.

Hi! I’m thrilled that found me. I am absolutely passionate about Yoga Nidra. Making these scripts was a labor of love and I can’t wait to share them with you. Whether you’re a Yoga Nidra expert, novice, or just curious, I am grateful to be on this journey with you.

I’ve been teaching Yoga Nidra for almost 15 years and I’ve taken some of my best scripts and put them together in this booklet for you. It’s taken me years and years to learn the subtle art of teaching Yoga Nidra and I’d love to share some of what I’ve learned with these scripts.

A few things to remember …

When you’re reading the script, remember to slow down and allow for pauses between sentences. Give your students enough time to become aware of what you’re inviting them to be aware of. With that in mind, each script runs an average of 30–35 minutes long. There are a few shorter ones included as well.

As you know, practicing Yoga Nidra is soooooo relaxing and easy but facilitating effective Yoga Nidra classes can be really challenging. There’s a lot going on behind the scenes to teach an effective Yoga Nidra experience. Having a good Yoga Nidra script and taking a Yoga Nidra training could be very helpful.

First, to offer an effective Yoga Nidra experience you gotta know the essential principles of Yoga Nidra—what the entire practice is pointing to. A Yoga Nidra facilitator also needs to understand the Yoga Nidra Roadmap to understand how to put the pieces together in a cohesive way to help with transformation. Plus, a facilitator needs to understand the principles of Yoga Nidra well enough to be able to tailor the practice of Awareness to help someone with specific needs.

This is why I made a TON of Yoga Nidra scripts for you, including a booklet of over 100 pages of scripts as well as a free script and audio recording (below) so you can use effective scripts to help teach yourself and other, today.

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Online YOGA NIDRA TRAININGS!

Learn to write your own scripts AND teach Yoga Nidra from the power of your own voice and experience to meet the unique needs of your students. Receive over 100 pages of Yoga Nidra scripts and the in-depth knowledge of how this incredible practice can be used to transform lives.

Make Your Own Yoga Nidra Scripts

I would love to teach you how to make your OWN scripts that help you make an impact for the world as well as making a living doing what you love, teaching Yoga Nidra. Are you interested in teaching Yoga Nidra?

I regularly hear from teachers who want to learn to teach Yoga Nidra but don’t want to be a rote version of their teachers. Also, teachers complain that that in order to learn how to write their own Yoga Nidra scripts that they have to wait for and PAY for the level 2 version of a Yoga Nidra training after they’ve already spent thousands on their initial training. That’s why I’ve created both a fantastic book of scripts as well as an online Yoga Nidra training to help you learn to write your own.

I believe that you will be most impactful to your students if you can teach from your own experience and voice, not as a rote version of your teacher. Having said that, reading someone else’s scripts can be very helpful, especially as you’re learning to find your own voice as a teacher.

Teaching Yoga Nidra

Learning to teach Yoga Nidra effectively from your own voice and learning to create your own scripts to meet the needs of your students does require understanding the basics principles of Yoga Nidra. When you understand the what and why of Yoga Nidra you’ll know how to use your practice, teaching, and life experience to be not only an effective teacher but and EXTRAORDINARY teacher, able to connect with students in ways that ONLY you can. Once you’ve been to the top of the mountain, you’ll know how to lead others there as well. Plus, I’ll teach you the industry secrets to actually make a living doing what you love.

Yoga Nidra Scripts Included in the Training!

“I thoroughly enjoyed your teaching and loved listening to all the deep teaching. The content was so thorough, and I have a much better understanding of the koshas now. I have learned so much-it is clear that you are very knowledgeable but also very passionate about what you do. So thank you for putting this training together. I wasn’t sure what to expect from an online training but I can safely say it was brilliant! I would recommend this to anyone wanting to learn Yoga Nidra. It was full of depth and sincerity which is what I liked most about it.”

— Sarah—Yoga Nidra Teacher Graduate

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Yoga Nidra Script: Basic Practice

Anamaya Kosha

by Scott Moore

10-15 minutes

Welcome to Yoga Nidra. Please lie down, close your eyes and prepare to relax. Give yourself a few breaths out your mouth and tell your body, mind, and heart to let go. If there is any way that you can prepare to relax deeper or more effectively, please do that now.

As we go through the process of Yoga Nidra, I invite you to welcome anything and everything that comes into your Awareness. From this point on, and through the duration of our Yoga Nidra practice, abandon all assessment of things and become the observer only.

Consider your intention or purpose for practicing Yoga Nidra. In your own mind, repeat, “My intention for practicing Yoga Nidra is . . .” and fill in the blank in your own head. Again, what is your intention for practicing Yoga Nidra? Repeat that to yourself in your own mind one more time

Now I invite you to relax 10% more than you’re currently relaxed. Relax your face. Relax your entire head. Relax your arms, your chest, belly, and back. Relax your pelvis and your legs. As we go through this process, don’t try to control your experience. Simply pay attention to my words and welcome, recognize, and witness everything that comes into your awareness without the need to change or fix anything.

Today we are going to explore sensations and feelings in our body to practice experiencing ourselves as Awareness.

Begin by noticing everything you are aware of in this moment. Notice sounds, smells, the temperature, etc. Notice also emotions, thoughts, and internal sensations. Simply welcome, recognize, and witness everything in your awareness, without any judgement, just awareness. Begin to identify as Awareness itself, Awareness manifesting itself in the form of body, thoughts, emotions, sounds, or anything you are aware of in this moment. Simply allow yourself to welcome, recognize, and witness all things as a way of experiencing yourself as Awareness.

Remember that sensations will come and go and will reveal your underlying Awareness. Be Awareness itself.

As Awareness, experience yourself as sensation. Follow my words as you become more aware of your body and as Awareness, allow yourself to become increasingly more relaxed. Bring your Awareness to the sensation of your mouth. Simply notice its presence. Welcome, recognize, and witness, the sensation of your mouth. Eyes. Ears. Entire face. Entire head.

Now feel the sensation of your neck and throat. Your shoulders. Arms. Feel your left arm as sensation, top to bottom. Feel your right arm, top to bottom. Left arm. Right arm. Feel both arms as sensation. Feel both arms at the same time.

Bring Awareness to the sensation of your trunk, your chest . . . feel your breathing . . . your belly, your back. Simply welcome, recognize and witness the sensation of your trunk. Simply notice its presence as Awareness.

Now bring Awareness to the sensations of your pelvis, the front, back and sides of your pelvis. Simply notice it as sensation. Simply welcome, recognize, and witness anything that arises spontaneously such as thought, emotion, or sensation.

Bring Awareness to the sensation of your legs. Feel your left leg, hip to toes. Feel your right leg, hip to toes. Left leg. Right leg. Left. Right. Now feel both legs, both legs as sensation.

Now feel the entire left side of your body, head to toe. Feel the entire right side of your body, head to toe. Left side. Right side. Now feel both sides. Feel your entire body.

Begin to feel as if your entire body is very large. Now adopt the feeling of being very small. Very large, again. Now small. Now adopt the feeling of being both large and small simultaneously. This does not need to make sense. Simply feel both large and small simultaneously.

What are you aware of in this moment? Sensations will come and go. In one moment, you may feel small and another large. What is the part of you that can be both small and large? Sensations reveal your unchanging, underlying, awareness.

Be Awareness itself. Become extremely aware of all things in this moment as Awareness itself. Simply welcome, recognize and witness all things in this moment as Awareness itself.

(optional additional Kosha exploration)

As Awareness, I invite you to begin to feel your body lying on the floor. Feel the sensations of your legs, feet, pelvis, trunk, arms, and head. As Awareness become acutely aware of the sensations in your hands and feet.

Now I invite you to remember your stated intention for practicing Yoga Nidra.

In a moment, we will be ending our Yoga Nidra practice. Because we have practiced experiencing ourselves as deep Awareness, you will find yourself moving back into your every-day life with clarity, purpose, and focus. You will find answers to your questions, and presence in your relationships. You’ll be more compassionate. You will feel less stress in your life and less reactive to stress. Through our practice of experiencing ourselves as Awareness, your life will feel richer and more vibrant.

In a moment, I will ring a bell (or count down from 5) and that will signal the end of our Yoga Nidra Practice. (Ring, or count). Yoga Nidra is over.

Yoga Nidra Training

It's nice to know that not everything you need for well-being involves effort. I'm thinking of two incredibly relaxing and transformational events that I think you're going to love, both of which involve copious doses of Yoga Nidra, the yoga of sleep.

Yoga Nidra Workshop/Book-Signing Event

As you may know, I spent time last summer writing a book. It's about Yoga Nidra, the yoga of sleep. The book (and practice) is about using relaxation to open yourself to your True Self, pure Awareness. The book came out while I was living in Europe and I'm thrilled at how it all turned out. Now that I'm back in the States, I thought it might be nice to get together with you for a Yoga Nidra workshop and book-signing event, a moment where we can practice together and then pop the cork on something bubbly to celebrate.

If you live in Salt Lake City, Utah, I'd be thrilled to have you join me on Sun. Feb 9th, from 1:15–3:45 pm. Come and practice napping your way to enlightenment! I'll be leading you through a few Yoga Nidra practices, reading some excerpts from my book, and sharing some poignant stories and poetry. I'll even be recording the practices so you can have a few take-home tools to use any time you might need some relaxation and spirit-opening. Plus, your tuition also includes a book. Then, stick around for some convivial fun. Come! Space is limited so please sign up soon. I'd love to see you there.

Yoga Nidra Training

And whether you live in Salt Lake City or not, consider joining me for a full weekend of Yoga Nidra immersion/teacher training. The training will be live and available either in-person or virtual and online. It will surely be a weekend of deep learning, deep rest, and deep transformations. Make it a full weekend of all-things Yoga Nidra!

One of the things I love about teaching others to facilitate Yoga Nidra is how in-depth we get to go about the theory, philosophy, and the spirit of the practice, not to mention the many deeply transformative practices we do throughout the weekend. The training is as much or more for your own personal, emotional, and spiritual advancement as it is to learn how to facilitate the practice for others.

Each time I teach a Yoga Nidra training, new and updated material surfaces and I'm excited to be offering my best, most informative training ever. This training isn't only for yoga teachers. In fact, I've loved the varied backgrounds of the students who have come to learn about Yoga Nidra. I've had students from all of the world—therapists, teachers, parents, and even family and divorce lawyers— attend this training to learn how to use this transformational art to help themselves as well as the people they influence learn how to tap into their own limitless resource of peace and joy within them.

One of the best things about this training is that you can access it, live and online, from anywhere in the world, so if you don't live in Utah, you can join me. Plus, you'll get a full recording of the training incase you have to miss a session or in case you simply want to review the materials. The training counts as continuing ed for Yoga Alliance and everyone who finishes receives a certificate of completion.

It's priced to fill up and spots are limited and several spots have already been sold so please register today.

Please email me with questions about either event and I' hope to see you there.

scott@scottmooreyoga.com

Thanks for your continued support and I Have a wonderful day!

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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

Coming Home: A Renaissance

I’ve been in New York for the past couple of days, enjoying spending time with family, teaching Yoga Nidra at Pure Yoga, and loving the great weather (mid-60s) we brought over from Nice. You’re welcome, New York.

Leaving our year-long stint in France and moving back to the states has me feeling a lot of conflicting emotions. I’ll miss learning and speaking French, the landscape and proximity to the ocean, and attention to savoring life with simple pleasures such as sitting at a cafe or lounging at the beach. I’ll also miss the preponderance of time I enjoyed writing over this past year. Nonetheless, I’m very excited to be back in Salt Lake City where I will be picking up a full teaching schedule again, reconnecting with family and friends, and being proximal to mountain trails for running. I truly feel that coming back to Salt Lake City will be much more of a renaissance rather than a simple return.

One of the biggest reasons for coming back to the States is because my wife and muse, Seneca, will be starting her new business soon. I’m immensely proud of her. She’s spent this past year working very hard to complete a challenging, in-depth, and beautiful training to become a holistic sex, love, and relationship coach that synthesizes modern neurobiology and holistic healing techniques along with ancient and powerful teachings of Tantra and Taoism. As her partner, I have watched her personally transform through her training in ways that has lightened her nervous system, healed deep spiritual wounds, and crowned her in the most beautiful sense self-love. We’ve learned many of the teachings of this program together and I’ve discovered volumes about myself through discussion, readings, and practice. Through her educational process, I have come to see even more of her divine essence, our marriage has strengthened to be stronger than ever, and I see our partnership as a vehicle for immense joy, power, love, and creation. She will be offering 1:1 sessions, small group sessions, retreats, workshops, and more, all dedicated to uncovering your wholeness, reaching your very greatest potential, and unlocking whatever that is inside of you.

One thing that’s most thrilling to me is that both of our work points to some of the same things, namely uncovering the power that already exists within us. In that light, in addition to her private practice, we’ll also be collaborating together on projects, workshops, and retreats.

Launching our collaboration, save the date for a Couples Sacred Love and Intimacy workshop that Seneca and I will be holding together on Saturday, February 15th from 10 am–1 pm. More information to be announced soon.

As Seneca is getting her business started, she is offering discounted coaching packages. Most of her new client spots are filled, but she has a few openings beginning in March. If you are interested, you can contact her directly at iptsam@gmail.com.

As far as my own work, I’m thrilled to be picking up classes at 21st Yoga sooner than I’d originally planned, like starting THIS Wednesday, January, 15th. Here’s my schedule for this week.

Live Yoga Nidra Teacher Training

Feb 7–9, 2020

Wednesday Jan. 15

• Power 1 8:45 am

• Restore at 10:15 am

• Core 4:30 pm

• Nidra at 6 pm

• Deep Power 7:15 pm

Thursday Jan. 16

• Power 1&2 at 9:15 am

Friday Jan. 17

• Power 1 at 5:50 pm

Saturday Jan. 18

• Restore 9 am.

Sunday Jan. 19

• Live, online, Yoga Nidra class

Also please save the date for a Yoga Nidra workshop and book signing event, Sunday, February 9 at 1:15–3:45. I’d like to do some Restore yoga, practice Yoga Nidra, read from my book, then raise a glass of something sparkly together in celebration of my book.

It will be great to come home.

Here’s to 2020! Thanks for all of your support.

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.

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LUXURY YOGA RETREAT IN BORDEAUX, FRANCE

JUNE 13–19, 2020

Visualizing How To Do The Impossible

If you read my email yesterday, you’re aware that I’m getting ready for the new year and new decade that is going to start in about a week and that I'm kicking it off with my 31-Day Meditation Challenge.

We are in a very unique and crucial time: it’s the time to prepare to create what we want to see in the next year and decade. Have you ever heard the saying, “If you’re not sure where you want to go, any path will take you there.” Knowing what you want and what’s possible are some of the keys to our happiness and fulfillment. Visualization is a key way of manifesting what we want in our lives.

Meditation, particularly Yoga Nidra, is a great way to practice visualizing what you’d like to see manifest in your life. If you are like I was, you might be a little skeptical about the idea of visualizations to manifest what you’d like to see in the world. But after practicing visualizing regularly, I can tell you that there’s some incredible mojo in visualization. That shit works!

In part, visualization works because for your brain and beliefs, seeing is believing. Even your most straight-laced neuroscientist will tell you that our brains don’t discern reality, they merely interpret it. Much of what we accomplish happens because we believe it can. Here’s a great example...

31-Day Meditation Challenge

Starts January 1, 2020. Start your decade off right.

For a long time, nobody believed that a human being could run a mile 4-minute mile. Impossible, they said. Then on May 6th 1954 Roger Bannister proved them wrong. What’s crazy is that as soon as Bannister showed people that it could be done, people started doing it right and left. Countless other high-performers from movie stars to CEOs to world-class athletes use visualization as their not-so-secret power for stellar performance. Each one of them, from Oprah to Muhammad Ali, will tell you that seeing is believing.

What do you believe is possible for your future? Are there any self-limiting beliefs that might be sabotaging you from accomplishing your potential? Yoga Nidra is an excellent way tapping what's possible for you.

Live, Online Yoga Nidra

Join us! Sundays at 9 am MST

Below, you'll see a button where I’m offering a free visualization for the New Year Yoga Nidra, guided meditation practice, that you can use to help set you up for what’s sure to be your best year and decade to come. And consider joining me this Sunday for my live, online Yoga NIdra class where this week we will be doing a live session as I offer visualizations for the new year.

I also invite you to join my 31-Day Meditation Challenge, starting January 1, where you will get the opportunity to use this and other visualizations regularly to set the trajectory for what’s to come. See what possibilities can happen when you start your year off with a simple, daily meditation for 15 minutes or more.

We’ve got a new year and a new decade ahead of us. What do you want to see arrive in your future? Are you willing to try visualizing what is possible? Please consider joining my 31-Day Meditation Challenge and invite your nearest and dearest to join too.

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I also wanted to share with you an excerpt from my new book, Practical Yoga Nidra, about the importance of Visualizations. I wrote an entire chapter on the topic.

Visualizations are scenes you evoke in your mind by using your senses. Your Inner Sanctuary is a good example of a visualization. Visualizations work with your unconscious mind to adjust ideas of what’s possible and help you live a more fulfilled life with deeper Awareness. The truth is, many of our actions are the product of our unconscious mind, and as you learned earlier, our unconscious mind could even be responsible for 95 percent of the actions we take. Therefore, visualization is a powerful way to understand, decode, and even rewire your unconscious mind.

For most of us, seeing is believing. Remember how your brain doesn’t differentiate very well between what you’re visualizing and what’s happening in real life? If you can see yourself succeeding, you can remove the unconscious blocks that prevent you from meeting your potential. Trust me, you are much more capable than you realize. But while visualizations can give you this deep personal insight, that’s really not their function in our Yoga Nidra practice.

The purpose of visualization in this step of the 10-step method is to practice seeing all parts of yourself to gain Awareness. If in your Awareness through visualization you see that you could respond to some stimuli a bit better in your life, then great. That’s a wonderful by-product of Awareness. Revealing something about your unconscious or gaining a message from your wise inner teacher could, in fact, be that tool that helps you become more aware.

Not all teachers use visualizations in Yoga Nidra, and those who do have their own takes—some simply invite the conscious mind to notice how it responds to concepts and phrases. For example, if you were to ask 10 people what their immediate response to the word “businessman” is, there would be 10 different responses. This kind of visualization reveals what kind of associations you may have and perhaps show how they affect your waking life. Other types of visualizations in Yoga Nidra include graduated exposure to emotional triggers, connecting to spirit guides, noticing and rewiring beliefs around money, and visualizing optimal performance. I personally find visualizations effective in creating powerful action in a person’s life through the practice of Awareness.

What This Practice Does for You

Visualizations in a Yoga Nidra practice help create a conversation between your conscious and unconscious mind. Like your conscious, or thinking, mind, your unconscious mind rests in the Vijnanamaya kosha. A good question might be how the conscious mind can be aware of the unconscious—isn’t that the point, that it’s unconscious? In Yoga Nidra, we go beyond the thinking mind to gain an Awareness that is broad enough to hold both conscious and unconscious mind alike. Yoga Nidra is like a handy bridge between the conscious and unconscious mind so there can be understanding and commerce between the two.

So much of what you believe about what’s possible or what you deserve in the world comes from your unconscious. As you relax and graduate into deepening layers of Awareness through Yoga Nidra, you can reveal some of the unconscious programming that’s running your life. This can be very illuminating to help to decode some of your unconscious actions and decisions like, for example, why you can never take a day off work even if you’re sick or why you keep losing at Scrabble with your best friend even though you can spell the pants off them. I can’t tell you why you don’t think you deserve a day off or why you take a nosedive at Scrabble, but with continued Yoga Nidra practice, including visualization, you can gain some insight and put some positive programming into your unconscious mind.

Aiming for a seven-letter word on the triple-word score square? Have an important presentation to give at work? Want to nail your next job interview? Wondering if you could ever find the love of your life? Using visualizations is an easy and effective way to access or program your unconscious mind to bring your best self forward into conscious action. A lot of famous people have used visualization to bring their best selves forward, including Muhammad Ali, Will Smith, Jim Carrey, Billie Jean King, Oprah Winfrey, and Carli Lloyd, to name just a few. In an interview recorded in the Harvard Business Review, Greg Louganis chalks up his ability for success and focus during competition to his practice of visualization.

Maybe Olympic diving isn’t your focus in life and what you’d love more than a gold medal is to learn to sleep well. Visualization through Yoga Nidra is a very powerful and effective way to help you achieve incredible sleep. One day a student came into Yoga Nidra class with desperation in her bloodshot eyes. “I haven’t slept well in over six months and I’m going crazy. Can Yoga Nidra help that?” she pleaded. “You’re in the right place,” I assured her.

During practice, we visualized getting very relaxed and achieving deep, peaceful, and nourishing sleep. After class she told me that she did not fall asleep during the practice but was the most relaxed she had been in months. She came back to class a few days later and reported that on the night of that Yoga Nidra class, she’d been able to achieve the first good night of sleep in six months. This student is not alone. Unfortunately, inadequate sleep is very common, and something as simple as a visualization through Yoga Nidra is a natural and effective way to help

One you understand the principles of why visualizations work and how to use them, you can guide yourself through your own visualizations independent of your Yoga Nidra practice

Remember, all parts of your visualization are parts of yourself speaking to your conscious mind. During your visualization, you may encounter an archetype. An archetype is a character or general model for something. Archetypes exist in your unconscious as symbols. For example, often when I tap into the wise person inside of me, it takes the form of Gandalf from Lord of the Rings. Gandalf is the archetype of my wise person and helps put a face to something otherwise abstract. I understand that when I visualize Gandalf offering me advice, I’m merely tapping my own deep inner wisdom, which is speaking to my conscious mind. All parts of the vision are parts of myself.

Once during a Yoga Nidra practice, I wanted to hear a message from my wise inner teacher. After fostering a deepening Awareness by going through the steps of my Yoga Nidra practice, like my Sankalpa, Inner Sanctuary, body scan, and so on, to connect to the teacher that resides in my deeper unconscious, I visualized one of my favorite professors from college. We were sitting in his office having a warm chat. I could clearly see all the elements—from the lamp in the corner to the wood grain of his desk. I could hear the chair squeak as he leaned back in thought and stroked his beard. Then he looked at me, almost mischievously out of the corner of his eye, and said, “Whatever you believe in, practice it every day.” For me, that visualization was my wise inner teacher reminding me of the importance of practice.

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.

Coming Home!!!

A year ago TODAY my wee family took a train from Paris to Nice to check out what would be our home for the next year. During this year, I have fallen in love with France and specifically Nice. I’ve loved learning and refining my French, I’ve soaked up the culture, I've made wonderful friends, and of course reveled in the incredible pastries, bread, cheeses, and wine. The motto for France has to be “Liberté, Egalité, and Gluten!”

But as we all know there are seasons for everything and Sen and I have decided that our season in France is coming to a close and so we've decided to move back to Salt Lake City. Coming back to Salt Lake City will be the beginning of a new and exiting chapter for us.

One of the biggest reasons for us coming back to Salt Lake City is to help launch Seneca's new business, an endeavor for which she's been studying and preparing over the past year. I'm really proud of the work she's been doing and will do and can't wait to tell you more about it. We are planning some fun and exciting ways in which we can even work together. But more about that later . . .

Another thing that will be different is that I'll be doing more traveling to work. Since I've moved away from Salt Lake City, I've been focused on building more of a global audience and that's paid off in some exciting ways. I already have plans for teaching workshops and trainings in different cities around the world, including New York and Hong Kong!

We will be arriving in mid-January. And while we never know what plans the Universe has for us next, we are nonetheless planning to stay in Salt Lake City for a few years.

I’m thrilled to be able to pick up classes again at 21st Yoga, to be offering workshops, and trainings, and to be working one on one with clients again. This year in France, and our time in New York before that, has been illuminating and wonderful and we will also be excited to come back to our community in Salt Lake City. We left Salt Lake City in June of 2017 and it will be nice to call it home again.

We will be visiting France next year to share with you my Bordeaux Yoga Retreat, June 13–19. If you’d like to see what I’ve been able to discover over this past year, I’d be honored to be your guide. This will be six days of savoring your life with yoga, wine, and presence, all while staying at an incredibly luxurious château.

My new book about Yoga Nidra dropped about a week ago and I’ve been so immensely touched by the response. Thank you with all my heart. I’m planning on having a Yoga Nidra and book signing event in Salt Lake City when I get back—a moment when we can practice some deeply needed Yoga Nidra, perhaps I will read an excerpt or two from my book, and maybe we can raise a celebratory glass of something afterwards. I’d be deeply honored if you could join me and of course I’ll provide information for that as it develops.

Over the next few days, I’ll send some more information about some exciting events I've been working hard on, namely my 31-Day Meditation Challenge starting January 1, as well as my Yoga Nidra with Scott Moore Volume 1, a series of Yoga Nidra recordings, but for today I want to let you know of a very special event I’m planning for TOMORROW with an incredible teacher, Rachel Posner: De-Stress For The Holidays

Together, Rachel and I are co-hosting a live, online event that will help you to de-stress from the holidays. Rachel is an incredible teacher and together we are going to offer some discussion about how we can manifest exactly the kinds of feelings we want for the holidays. Then we will put it into practice with some engaging breathwork, poses, meditations, and journaling. This is happening on Tuesday, December 17th at 9 am MST. You can join us from anywhere in the world. but we’ll be recording it so you can watch it later if you can’t make the exact time work. Plus, we’ll give you some take home materials including some meditations and other resources to help you be your best for the holidays. It costs $20 and you can register at my website, scottmooreyoga.com or by clicking the button either on my email or blog post, depending on where you’re reading or listening to this.

If you like the idea of catching up with live and online, I’ve also been hosting my live, online Yoga Nidra classes on Sundays at 9 am MST and I’ve really loved hosting those. We’ve had some great conversations and some excellent practices using Yoga Nidra to help us with all kinds of things from sleep, to stress, to connecting to our hearts. This week we will be focusing on giving the best gift possible for the holidays which is a stress-free version of yourself to all those who are privileged enough to be in your proximity.

Again, we have loved being in France but we will also be coming back to Salt Lake City to be close to family, friends and our community, and this of course includes you

Thank you for your wonderful support. I hope to see you tomorrow in my live, online workshop with Rachel

Yoga Nidra for Sleep

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Yoga Nidra means the yoga of sleep. More appropriately, it’s about waking up than going to sleep. Here are some ways Yoga Nidra can help you sleep.

Let me elaborate…

Yoga Nidra for Sleep

Yoga is the yoking of all things into Oneness. NIdra actually refers to the hypnogogic state BETWEEN dreaming and wakefullness. It’s a bridge that connects consciousness, and unconsciousness, dreaming and waking, form and sprit. But appropriately named, its super power is relaxation which helps to guide practitioners into deepening layers of awareness to arrive a the beautiful marriage of form and spirit. True, Yoga Nidra is very relaxing and can even cause people to fall asleep during the process. If that happens, I always tell my students not to worry because the part that I’m speaking to is still paying attention.

While practicing Yoga Nidra, you may fall asleep, you may stay awake, but Yoga Nidra can be a great way to develop regular deep, natural, and nourishing sleep. One of the ways it does this is through simply bringing practitioners into a great sense of Awareness. Tantra philosophy (the school of thought where Yoga Nidra comes from) states that our True Nature is that of Awareness. If you can experience your True Nature through practices like Yoga Nidra, you’ll find yourself more whole. As you experience your True Self, that of Awareness, you find yourself experiencing the part of you that is synonymous with Source. There’s nothing you lack or need in this state. Therefore, when you approach yourself to Source (your True Self) then any apparent lack goes away. Yoga Nidra is perhaps my favorite (and most relaxing) way of connecting to Source. If sleep is something that is troubling you, getting clear with Source is a great way to get back on track.

I’ve always said that wellness is the byproduct of Awareness.

Since Yoga Nidra is about deepening your Awareness, it’s also true that your nature state is that of relaxed Awareness. This is a very common state of mind during Yoga Nidra. The relaxation part of Yoga Nidra is very useful to practice. It trains you to deepen your relaxation when you really need it, especially during times when you’re trying to sleep.

Often times, not getting good or regular sleep, or bouts of insomnia, are symptoms of other things such as imbalance in body, mind, or spirit. Your energy could be off. Your diet could be skewed. Your stress could be through the roof. Either way, if your sleep is lacking, it’s an invitation to look at your life. Yoga Nidra is a great way to do just this. The practice invites us to simply be the observer of things as they are and see our lives with as much objectivity as possible. Though practicing Yoga Nidra, you might discover an imbalance or a faulty belief that is preventing you from thriving in your life and which might manifest as sleeplessness.

Resting is a skill. Like all skills, you can be good at it or bad at it. Yoga Nidra is a way of practicing the skill of relaxing. It does this in part by deepening your layers of Awareness through the different layers of your ego called Koshas. You’ll experience paying keen attention to body, energy, mind, beliefs and archetypes, and even you layers of joy and bliss—all as ways of learning to misidentify with them and see how they point yo–––u to your True Self, that of pure Awareness. The process is very relaxing. Truly, you’ll experience your Both And nature, the part of you that is married as both consciousness and physicality combined. As you experience your Both And nature, you’ll find yourself simultaneously relaxing deeper and deeper while also becoming more aware.

Yoga Nidra helps you to simply welcome, recognize and witness without opinions. Often times we get worked up when we can’t sleep. We find ourselves not sleeping and then get stressed about not sleeping, increasing our anxiety and making it even harder to sleep. Yoga Nidra helps you practice allowing things to be just as they are, neither good nor bad, but witnessing whatever is as mere information. Even sleeplessness. You can rest blissfully in a sleepless state simply being curious about sleeplessness rather than getting worked up over the fact that you’ve got a big day tomorrow and it’s 2 am and you still haven’t fallen asleep. Also, it’s said that Yoga Nidra is the rest equivalent of 4x sleep, so 30 minutes of Yoga Nidra is like a solid 2-hour nap. Even if you’re not sleeping, you can rest assured that you’re still getting some great rest.

Some things to consider regarding sleep

Your mind is a processing machine. It’s a computer. The brain isn’t very good about distinguishing between real events, scenes it sees on a screen like a moving, and things it pictures as images in your mind. If you’re laying there in bed, replaying the horrible things that could happen tomorrow over and over again in your mind, your brain is releasing the same fight or flight chemicals it would if you were literally in that situation. Instead, you can use one of the tools I often use in Yoga Nidra to help people tap into the rest and digest part of the nervous system. Because our mind isn’t great about differentiating scenes in the mind vs. scenes in reality, you can visualize peaceful scenes and release the same rest and digest chemicals in your brain as if you were literally in that scene, experiencing all that bliss. You get to make your own bliss. You simply tap into your senses and visualize as if seeing through your own eyes, smelling with your own nose, hearing with your own ears, all the things you’d see in your oasis of peace. This will help you to begin to relax and stop sending cortisol (stress hormone) through your system when you should be going to sleep.

To help your mind wind down before bed, you can also simply find a focus. Because the brain is meant to process, give your mind something simple and singular to process before going to bed rather than defaulting to process the worst-case-scenario of could happen tomorrow. Start counting your breaths down from 100. Exhale and think 100, inhale think 99, exhale 98, etc. It’s incredible how easily your mind will relax when it can focus on something simple. This works miracles.

Good Sleep Hygiene

You may consider a few tips to help you train your body to receive regular, deep, and nourishing sleep.

• Develop a sleep schedule. Go to bed and wake up at the same time every day. Plan on a full 7–9 hours of sleep, even if you think you can get away with less.

• Have a bed-time ritual. Plan on winding down before bed and that means avoiding screens, big emotions, and drama before bed. Do some light reading with dim lights and some camomile tea.

• Avoid blue lights, fluorescents, and LED lights. All of these kinds of lights emit the kind of light that your body recognizes in sunlight and it messes up your circadian rhythm.

• Monitor your caffeine. You may think that caffeine is not causing you any problems but it can stay in your system for up to 48 hours and even if it doesn’t prevent you from falling asleep, it can prevent you from going into deep sleep, or staying asleep.

Please enjoy a free Yoga Nidra recording designed to help you practice getting relaxed and practice deep, peaceful and nourishing sleep.

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My Book Drops Today!!!!!

Today’s the day! I’m so thrilled. My publisher said that if everything goes as planned then my book would be published on December 10th. Well, everything has gone as planned and I’m so pleased to say that my book is LIVE!

So I’ve been talking about this for a while now but in case you have no clue what I’m talking about, I wrote a book called Practical Yoga Nidra: A 10-Step Method to Reducing Stress, Improving Sleep, and Restoring Your Spirit.

The publisher did a bang-up job on making it beautiful. I’m just so proud, I can’t even stand it! I really want to share it with you, and I’m even going to share with you an excerpt from the book, including a story about my dear, dear friend Kim Dastrup and her wonderful father and an unforgettable lesson he taught me about joy.

If you haven’t pre-ordered you book and are curious, you can get your copy on Amazon, Kindle, Barnes and Noble, and other places fine books are sold. My publisher says that there might even be a chance that Audible will want to do an audio version of this book, which makes sense cuz it has over 20 scripts for guided Yoga Nidra meditations. The book only costs $12.99

If you want to give the gift of bliss for the holidays, perhaps consider buying a few of these and handing them out to your nearest and dearest and everyone in between. And hey, a great way to become a NYT Bestseller is to have every one of my friends go to every book store they know and simply purchase all my books (individually) you see on the shelves. Think of all the people you could make happy over the holidays with a CASE of these books.

Also, if you’re looking for ways to de-stress over the holidays, I’m so excited to announce that I’ve teamed up with the inimitable Rachel Posner, a teacher that I revere to co-teach a live, online class that will feature discussion, breathwork, poses, meditations, and journaling. This will be live and online on Tuesday, December 17th at 9 am MST. It costs $20 and we will be recording it so if you can’t make the time, you can watch the recording later. You can register for this at my website, scottmooreyoga.com. If you belong to my email list, I’ll be sending an email specifically about this workshop with more deets, or like I said run over to my website.

Thanks everyone for your wonderful support. I’ll finish by reading this excerpt from my book about one of the crucial steps in our Yoga Nidra practice which is to tap into joy.

Tap Into Joy

Tapping into your joy means practicing daily happiness and pleasure. It’s about learning to see the myriad things around you all the time that can cause you joy. However, your joy is not actually dependent on events and circumstances, and it’s accessible whenever you wish. In Yoga Nidra, joy is found beyond the mind. When you have the know-how, there is little or no effort to connect to this part of your being. Eventually, with practice, you won’t need a trigger to feel this joy. You’ll simply be joy. This limitless joy is your True Nature.

Despite whatever pain you may have experienced or whatever scars are on your heart, you have unfettered joy waiting to be dusted off. This joy is your essence. It has always existed the same way you have always existed. Learning to tap into the joy that is always with you opens your heart to inexhaustible prana, or energy. For example, in his audio program Clear Mind, Wild Heart, writer and poet David Whyte shares a story about a time when he felt utterly exhausted by his work for a nonprofit. He asked his friend Brother David Steindl-Rast (a Catholic Benedictine monk) half-jokingly, “What’s the antidote to exhaustion?” His friend looked at him for a moment and then responded with something Whyte found life-changing: “The antidote to exhaustion isn’t necessarily rest. It’s wholeheartedness.”

Whyte realized that, at that moment in his life, his heart was yearning for him to devote himself to poetry instead of the work he was doing for the nonprofit. From that moment forward, he started letting go of what didn’t tap into his joy so that he could put all of his energies into what did. Whyte has since become a world-renowned poet, speaker, and author. That’s not to say you need to give up the work you do, of course; you can begin tapping into joy by simply noticing when you smile or laugh, remembering what you love, doing the things you enjoy wholeheartedly, and of course practicing Yoga Nidra.

Learning to tap into your limitless joy can be fun and easy. It’s the momentary joys in life that reveal your unchanging joy, the feeling of your True Self. Make it a regular practice to notice the things you love about life. You have an immense power to create or interpret your reality, and focusing on what brings you joy and what you want to see in your life is key to feeling in love with life.

If you adopt a Hobbesian approach to life, that it is “nasty, brutish, and short,” you’ll find endless proof to support that view. But if you adopt an It’s a Wonderful Life approach, you’ll find just as

much proof.

If you get to create your reality, why not make it as beautiful as possible by noticing all of its joy, love, and sensuality? As you allow joy, love, and sensuality to become regular features in your life, you’ll soon find that your entire life becomes an expression of this joy. Doing this regularly will also prime you to invite these elements into your Yoga Nidra practice.

What This Practice Does for You

Your complete happiness and sensuality lie within the subtle layer of your being called the Anandamaya kosha (the bliss body). This kind of joy isn’t momentary happiness that comes and goes; rather, it is the unlimited bliss you experience as your True Self. However, learning to witness life’s momentary joys helps prepare you to feel your True Self’s natural state of limitless joy. As I mentioned in chapter 3, the mind makes little distinction between what plays out on a screen, in your mind, or in real life. Your brain doesn’t differentiate between what’s real and imagined, so visualizing what makes you happy can have the same effect as actually experiencing it.

While our True Nature is joy, ironically, we have been programmed to be pretty negative. In fact, humanity’s survival may very well have depended on it. Think about it: You’re less likely to jump into a shallow lake if you think you might hit jagged rocks at the bottom. Therefore, finding your joy through Yoga Nidra and similar practices is a process that essentially rewires the brain from its negative default to inhabiting our birthright to be unfailingly happy. It’s the kind of happiness you don’t have to wait around for. No one’s going to give it to you, and it’s not tied to any event. Like it or not, no one and nothing is responsible for your happiness. You must decide to see what is joyful around you and make it a regular practice to invite joy into your life.

Several years ago, my friend Kim’s dad, Warren, suffered a serious spinal cord injury. He’s confined to a wheelchair, has very limited movement in his arms and legs, and requires daily help from nurses, especially after his wife and caretaker passed away. A while back, Kim and I were staying at Warren’s house along with Kim’s sister and two daughters. Warren and I were sharing a room, and as we were tucking into our beds, he began to muse about how many of his friends enjoy luxuries like big houses, boats, and cars. With tears in his eyes, he said, “You know, when I see my daughters and my granddaughters, I can’t help but feel like I’ve won in life. I’ve won!” Warren sat there in the dark with a wide grin on his face. He didn’t say a thing about any of the challenges that beset his life and chose only to see the joy.

Sankalpa: Being Known By The Universe Through Our Desires

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I'm so excited!!!!!!!

My new book, Practical Yoga Nidra, hits the shelves December 10th. That's like in 5 days! This is really a dream come true for me. I'm really proud of this book and I can't wait to share it with you.
The following is an excerpt from my book. My book offers a simple, 10-step guide to developing a Yoga Nidra practice, one that will help you reduce stress, improve sleep, and restore your spirit.

Preorder your book on Amazon ($12.99) by clicking on the photo and I’ll give you a FREE live, online Yoga Nidra class ($12 value).

Enjoy this excerpt and let me know what you think about the concept of Sankalpa and intentions. Keep in mind that though I’m writing about setting your intention for a Yoga Nidra practice, the practice of Sankalpa could be used for starting a yoga practice, meditation, or any project or goal.

Also, in my upcoming volume of Yoga Nidra recordings (available in a few weeks), I’ll have an entire practice dedicated to using Yoga Nidra, and in particular the use of Sankalpa, or intention setting, as a deeply mindful way of helping you to visualize your goals to make them into a reality.

Step 1 of the 10-Step Method is to set your intention. Sankalpa is a Sanskrit word that could most simply be translated as your intention. However, the practice of choosing your Sankalpa is a bit more entailed than merely stating your intention for your Yoga Nidra practice. Your Sankalpa is like a personal mantra or a statement of truth that you repeat in your mind as you begin your Yoga Nidra practice. I encourage you to sincerely consider your Sankalpa each time you begin a Yoga Nidra practice. If there’s something big in your life you feel you need, your Sankalpa could be the same each time. However try to picture what specifically you need today in relationship to that desire. In other words, don’t get stuck in the past with a Sankalpa that is outdated for you.

To choose your Sankalpa, it’s best to pause for a moment, close your eyes, take a few deep breaths, and become present by opening to your senses. Then reflect for a brief few seconds about what you need most in your life in the moment. Your Sankalpa might be for something practical and physical, something emotional, or something spiritual. You may even set an intention for the well-being of another person or whole group of people. Your Sankalpa doesn’t even have to be about what you want but rather maybe for the ability to articulate a recognition, appreciation, or gratitude for what you already have. It’s important that your Sankalpa is as short a sentence or phrase as possible. This helps you to gain clarity on what you really need or want. When choosing your Sankalpa, be positive, specific, and be present.

First, be positive. The Universe is one big, eternal yes. It’s inviting you to merge into its path of awakening to a complete understanding of this positivity and this yes. Yoga Nidra is about aligning with your True Nature and you can begin this essential alignment by choosing a Sankalpa that reflects this Universal positivity.

When choosing a Sankalpa, focus on what you want rather what you want to avoid. I heard one of my teachers, Judith Lasater, say, “What is worrying but praying for what you don’t want?” I grew up in Utah where everyone mountain bikes in the summer and skis in the winter. Coaches in both sports teach beginners to look where they want to go rather than where the don’t want to go. It’s incredible how focusing on something, good or bad, brings about its realization.

The next consideration in choosing your Sankalpa is specificity. Being specific paints a bullseye for the Universe to aim for. Make your Sankalpa one short sentence. Choose the exact thing you want rather than sweeping generalities. Once, a friend in her 20s asked the Universe for a car. Her intention was to own something with an automatic transmission and a sun roof. A week later, her family inherited a Lincoln town car that indeed had both automatic transmission and a sunroof but smelled like an ashtray, was 12 feet long, and probably older than she was. She drove that car gratefully but was sure that the next time she made her automotive intentions known to the Universe, she was sure to add that she wanted something a bit more sporty and hip.

Lastly, when choosing your Sankalpa, it’s essential to be present. The part of you that you’re communicating your Sankalpa to only understands the present. Past and future are abstract concepts regulated by different parts of your brain and being. When making your Sankalpa speak to what is rather than what isn’t. This means formulating something you’re searching for in present terms and focusing on where you’re at, what you have, and who you are now in relationship to where you wish to go.

Here are a few samples of Sankalpas that you can modify to help you create your Sankalpa that is positive, specific, and present:

• “I’m on my road to ___________.”
  
  
  
  

• “I already have everything inside of me that I need for ___________.”
  
  
  
  

• “The Universe is ready to give me __________.”

What This Practice Does for You 

Your Sankalpa acts as a guiding star for how your journey of Yoga Nidra will unfold, what kind of awareness will be revealed, and which layers will be removed which obfuscate your ability to experience your True Self.

When you state your Sankalpa, you plant a living seed of spirit, hope, and desire inside your mind and heart as a clear and direct invitation to the Universe to reveal to you your true identity through that intention. Your Yoga Nidra practice cultivates the fertile soil for your seed of Self-Awareness to grow and bloom.

The beautiful and ancient Gayatri Mantra is one of the oldest mantras we know of and comes from the Rig Veda, part of a body of texts called the Vedas dating between 1700–1100 BCE. The Gayatri Mantra teaches how stating your Sankalpa before your Yoga Nidra practice works to help manifest that thing. The Gayatri Mantra states:

oṃ bhūr bhuvaḥ suvaḥ
tatsaviturvareṇyaṃ
bhargo devasyadhīmahi
dhiyo yo naḥ prachodayāt

My favorite translation of this mantra from Donna Farhi goes something like:

Everything on the earth and in the sky and in between
Is arising from one effulgent source
If my thoughts, words, and deeds reflected a complete understanding of this unity
I would be the peace I am seeking in this moment.

As this mantra says, if I understood the essence of all things—including myself and the thing I want—I’d understand that everything comes from the same source. Ultimately, I’d see that I’m no different than the thing I want.

While this is nice to understand on a philosophical level, it will most likely take a lifetime of practice (or more lives if there are more to be had) to truly understand this truth. Yoga Nidra is a perfect way to practice coming to understand this truth, by aligning with our magnificent Source.

According to Yoga Nidra philosophy, everything in the Universe is boiled down to Awareness. When you align with your basic Awareness through presence, Yoga Nidra being my favorite way to practice presence, you align with the origin of all things, including you and including those things you feel separate from. Remember, Yoga Nidra is about remembering and experiencing our fundamental wholeness. This is why this is considered a practice of yoga or “yoking” together of all things.

Your Sankalpa speaks to the eternal part of you that isn’t dependent upon past or future. Therefore, planting the seed of Sankapla in your heart and mind is like planting iris bulbs in the fall—they bloom in the spring whether you remember planting them or not. Because your Sankalpa works for your benefit whether you remember it or not, it’s essential that we be mindful and deliberate when choosing a Salkalpa.

The practice of Yoga Nidra is simply about being present. Starting your Yoga Nidra practice with your Sankalpa makes you very present by first, taking a moment to recognize your needs and second, by alerting the Universe how to best awaken you to your ultimate Awareness. You do this by practicing Awareness and an understanding that you are no separate from what you seek.

It reminds me of Leonard Cohen’s song “Anthem,” where the artist meditates on how through our perceived brokenness or sense of lack, we come to understand our own wholeness and illumination. We aren’t perfect despite our brokenness but because of it. Stating our Sankalpa is alerting to ourselves and the Universe the avenue by which we are coming to know ourselves as perfect, whole beings.

I'd like to share with you the powerful Yoga Nidra practice we had last week during our live, online Yoga Nidra practice. It's is a practice that is designed to develop your Sankalpa, your powerful intention and manifestation to the Universe for whatever you feel you need in your life right now.

It's about 21 minutes long. I hope you love it. Tell me what you think.

Also, you can click below to join this week's class on Sunday, December 8 at 9 am MST. This class theme is : You Are Bigger Than Your Beliefs

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!

Limitless Energy: Your Heart

Untethered Soul by Michael Singer

Several months ago, I was at lunch with my friend, Philippe. He told me about how a mutual friend turned him on to an incredible book called The Untethered Soul by Michael A. Singer to help guide him through some transitions in his life. Have you read this book? I can't recommend it highly enough. I’ve since read it and I gotta tell you that it's a total life-changer. Seriously. It’s a simple, non-dogmatic guide to consciousness and arriving at your happiest, most in-love, and energized self.

Philippe told me about this book at the exact time in my life when I needed to be introduced to it. Figures. I was freaking out about life and questioning life's purpose and what my role is on this big blue marble and as I read that book, it totally clarified some of life's major themes for me.

One thing that made this book so powerful for me was what Michael Singer said about how how there is limitless resources in our hearts, that we think energy is a product of the amount of rest we get or the amount of calories we consume, bla ,bla bla, but in truth, we have a resource of limitless energy within our heats if we will only access it.

My friend, Philippe, is also an Aikido Master and we've discussed at length and even done a few Yoga+Aikido workshops together, to explore the idea of approaching the limitless energy that exists within all of us, that which exists within our hearts, and can be sourced through movement, practice, and breath.

The Antidote to Exhaustion

Writer, speaker, and poet David Whyte is my homeboy. I live by his wisdom and words. He tells a story about once when he was feeling crushed by the weight of doing all "right" things in life but feeling exhausted in the process. He told a story of mentioning this dilemma to his friend, the wise Brother David Steindl-Rast, a Benedictine Monk, writer and lecturer, who told him that "The antidote to exhaustion isn't necessarily rest, but whole heartedness."

Have you ever experienced a time when you felt like you could do anything with the energy that you felt in your heart, when you really cared about something and that feeling caused you to act on something? Or have you ever felt crushed by putting all of your energy into something you didn't really care about?

Well, what if you could access that limitless resource of energy as often as you wished and what if you could direct your entire life from that energy?

This is precisely what I want to explore in my Live, Online Yoga Nidra class this week, Sunday, Nov. 17th at 9 am MST. We will discuss the topic a bit, do some powerful breathwork together, then do an incredibly relaxing and energizing Yoga Nidra practice that will access the limitless resources that already exist within you.

I've hosted two of these online Yoga Nidra sessions so far and I'm absolutely thrilled how they've gone down.

Please consider joining me for my next, live and online Yoga Nidra session happening this Sunday, November 17th at 9 am MST. If you're interested but can't make it work in your schedule, please register and you'll receive the recording after it's done.

Whatever you do this week, consider doing it with a wholeness of heart.

Balance Your Life with Yoga Sadhna: A Guest Post by Chinmay Yoga

I read this great article by Chinmay Yoga and I thought it would be interesting to repost. Enjoy!

Photo by Alex Adams

Describing the concept of Sadhana can be a little tricky as every person experiences it differently. However, one could define Sadhana as “a means to achieve the goal of life.” The “means” may include incorporating practices of Buddhism, Jainism or Sikhism in the routine or even the philosophy preached in these disciplines which will then help in changing the nature from human to divine. In order to achieve this transition, one must embrace things that are Satvik, like food, surroundings, thoughts and even conversations.

We tend to become a reflection of our thoughts. Our actions are led by our thoughts which then become a part of our routine in the form of a habit. The nature establishes itself in the subconscious mind first, then in actions. However, meditation can help in changing our subconscious mind, which in turn helps in changing our nature. Many people who have lived in ashrams or embraced a certain path of spirituality have thought of Sadhana at least once a day as a daily ritual and incorporated it as a daily practice. It has helped bring a clarity in what matters and what they expect out of their life. Through this practice, many people have unravelled their dharma and also have found the courage to walk the path that is led by it.

Though Sadhana may have a set of daily practices, its scope is much broader than that. It is also a practice that includes the application of awareness and insights during the daily routine. It surely helps when one has a set routine or a practice prescribed by an experienced instructor until one is able to understand the nuances themselves and is committed to the practice. Once the commitment to the practice is established, it is easy to understand what is going to work better in order to accomplish spiritual and material goals in life. Nevertheless, it is always advised to be totally well-versed with the set routine, practice for a minimum of three months to understand its benefits entirely and then modify it.

Sadhana, however, is not something that one does, but it is engaged with. It is more like a process. It will be more beneficial if you actually engage with it instead of doing it only for the sake of it or accomplishing something. One must be present fully to experience it perfectly while appreciating every moment. While it is possible to engage in Sadhana with a completely self-designed routine, it is advisable to seek help from an experienced teacher. Regardless, while in the process, it is important to appreciate every moment and experience it rather than focusing on the practice. This practice has transformed and changed many lives in various ways by doing yoga courses.

An example of the practice routine maybe as follows:

1. Waking up the body: After waking up early, wash the face and exercise, moving the body will awaken every muscle in the body, too.

2. Sync the movements of the body with the process of breathing: This helps in pumping more blood and following every movement with more energy. An exercise routine, like neck stretches, jumping jacks, rotating of the arms and body twists, while paying attention to the breathing, should be followed.

3. Engaging with self: Post the work out, walk up to a quiet and serene location and engage with yourself. Relax with the eyes closed and inhale deeply. Ask questions and pause, let the body answer instead of your mind. Once the distractions fade out, the mind clears itself and it gets easier to listen to the body. 4. Practicing Yoga along with meditation: Choose from the various asana of yoga and create a sequence. It is even more beneficial if meditation accompanies the practice of the asana. Once well-versed with this practice, one can realise their capacity to transform their lives.

5. Breathing and meditating: Once done with the sequence of yoga, it is ideal to sit quietly and meditate for a period of 10-15 minutes. Paying attention to the breathing and observing every moment without actively participating can help in focusing and being aware of the present. Sometimes, one may experience the state of profound wisdom when they are actually open to experiencing it.

6. Introspection: Reflect upon the practice and the observations made about the body and yourself. Think about the intentions and steps that can lead to manifestations. Think about the day ahead.

7. Make a commitment: Ask the body about how it wishes to be today and commit to the answer received.

Chinmay Yoga - BIO Chinmay Yoga is a Yoga School in India which conduct yoga teacher training in Dharamsala, Rishikesh and Gokarna. Chinmay Yoga works to spread yoga knowledge by provide free drop-in classes, conducting YTTC Courses in India (Yoga Alliance) for 799 USD with amazing homemade food, great accommodation with air conditioning and very knowledgeable yoga teachers from India. Chinmay Yoga also works for the nature and surroundings around it by planting trees and installing dustbins in the city.

Learn more about Chinmay Yoga:

www.chinmayyoga.com

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Author – BIO

Katherine Austin is a professional yoga teacher trainer with 10 years of experience in Yoga. She is certified yoga teacher trainer. She practiced in Hatha Yoga, Yin Yoga, Ashtanga Yoga, Surya Namaskar. Katherine has worked with Chinmay Yoga School for 6 years. She is one of the favourite teachers of Chinmay’s students. Katherine loves to travel, reading books, spend quality time with new people.

Yoga Nidra and the Trinity: Your Both/And Nature

About a year ago, I hosted a special evening of Yoga Nidra exploring the theme of the sacred trinity of Self. We gathered at a friend’s house and discussed the idea of expanding your consciousness to its fullest by understanding the concept of your own sacred trinity.

During this event, I recounted some Hindu stories about Shiva, Shakti, and their marriage and subsequent creation of Ganesh, the elephant-headed god. We talked about other symbols of the Trinity, like in Christianity, eastern and Pagan spiritual traditions, etc.

We discussed the practical elements of this concept like experiencing different cycles in your life of birth, life, death, and rebirth, for the opening up of your eyes to the beauty of life and being born anew as something else entirely. We even discussed the dark night of the soul that accompanies some deep experiences of awakening. I told several very personal stories that illustrated the concepts as well.

Photo by Scott Moore—Hindu Monastery Kauai

The discussion was interesting and heart-felt. I recorded the entire event and I’ve been re-listening to the recordings of this evening. Doing so has been very inspiring for me and has taught me so much more about the subject the second go around. I believe we often learn in cycles instead of linearly and each revolution around a lesson helps me to learn it better and deeper. Maybe this is why some lessons in my life feel like they are on repeat. Can you relate? Groundhog’s Day, anyone?!

Anyway, I really want to share these recordings with you so I’m offering them to you for free. Treat it kind of like a podcast with a Yoga Nidra practice attached. We even do some yoga poses together, so wear your stretchy pants. Keep in mind that in the discussion I mention some breathing exercises that we did but they ended up being pretty intense so I would feel better sharing those with you only with some in-person guidance therefore I did not include these. Click the button on top to listen to entire discussion (1h 32 min) then check out the Yoga Nidra practice which is like another 30 minutes. Invite your bestie over and make it a date. Better than Netflix!

I love this idea of the Trinity so much that I’ll be expanding upon this theme THIS WEEK in my live, online Yoga Nidra class. This is a new class happening every Sunday at 9 am MST. I’d love for you to join me. It's live but since it's online, you can do it from the comfort of your own home using your smartphone, tablet, or computer. I will also record each of these classes, both audio/video and audio only, so you can either catch the recording of class later if you can’t make the live version and/or keep the recording for your Yoga Nidra library for future use and for your own cyclical learning and personal evolution.

This past Sunday was the first of these classes and it went smashingly well! I am giddy with the outcome of this past class and can’t wait to do it again this week. Please join me. Class costs $12. Register and I'll send you the link to join the class on Sunday.

Photo by David Newkirk

So many of you responded about the news of my book. Thank you, thank you, thank you! Your support really means so much to me. If you haven't already and have the mind to, please preorder my book from amazon. These early sales make a big difference to the success of any writer. I'm really proud of the book and I think you'll love it. I can't wait to share it with you. Click the picture of the book below to preorder your copy. Remember that if you send me a screenshot of your purchase, I’ll say thank you with a free online YN class that you can either access live, or get the recording after or both.

I'm in the process of making Yoga Nidra with Scott Moore Volume 1. I'll let you know when that's done. Plus, I’ve had some orders for private Yoga Nidra recordings so if you’d like me to make YOU your private Yoga Nidra recording based on something you’re working on in your life, or if you’d prefer to have a private live session online, please reach out to me at scott@scottmooreyoga.com to arrange a time.

Luxury Bordeaux Yoga Retreat

June 13–19, 2019. Just a few spots left!

Last but not least I’ve got just a few spots left for my luxury retreat in Bordeaux June 13–19, 2020. I’d really love to share France with you and do yoga and Yoga Nidra with you for 6 days, not to mention visiting some world-renowned vineyards for some wine tastings. The theme for these 6 days will be learning to savor your life with presence.

Synopsis of Yoga Nidra and the Trinity: Your Both/And Nature

Click the link at the top of this post to hear the entire discussion and Yoga Nidra practice.

History is replete with different forms of sacred trinities. How many different forms of the trinity can you think of? Off hand a few that come to mind are: body, mind, and spirit; earth, wind, and fire; Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva; Shiva, Shakti, and Ganesh; Buddha, Sangha, Dharma; peanut butter, jelly, and bread . . . the list is eternal.

The concept of the Trinity speaks to understanding our True Nature. A singular object in the Universe is in isolation, adding a second creates a binary, but when you can understand or experience these in what I call their Both/And Nature, your eyes open up to experience a truer, more expanded concept of beingness. I believe this is what is meant by seeing with your 3rd eye. In fact, by expanding beyond the singularity or duality of your own nature brings you into the full knowing of your truest Self.

Stay with me…

We come from Source, that which is everything. We are born into a human experience and our conscious is one of simple singularity—everything that exists in this form of consciousness is what can see or feel and that’s all I know. Then an infant experiences the entire world as an extension of herself. Natural differentiation happens between 6–18 months old and suddenly a duality is created. Now, the consciousness experiences a “this” and “that” which exist as two separate things. Many of us will live the rest of our lives in this sense of duality. Many different philosophies, including Yoga Nidra philosophy—rooted in Tantra, a school of eastern thought—suggest that to truly understand the essence of the Universe and ultimately your own essence, you must see beyond this dualist thinking into an expanded view, that of the Both/And nature, the trinity.

The Hindu god Ganesh is a perfect example of a trinity: He is the child of Shakti who represents form, and Shiva who represents consciousness. Half spirit, half physical being, he exists as something entirely new and completely necessary than his parents. It’s only through creating this new thing, that the trinity is born and through it all things can come into being. Otherwise all things in the Universe would have been locked into a state of duality or simple singularity. But as the symbol of Ganesh suggests, the entire world opens up to something bigger and more expansive thanks to the marriage of two things and the creation of another. Many people celebrate Ganesh for his hybrid nature which lends itself to great compassion, understanding, and direction.

Both/And Nature and the Trinity

Many practices such as yoga, meditation, and Yoga Nidra, expand the practitioner’s consciousness beyond a binary and help them to come to know themselves as part of a larger Singularity, Source, built as the Both/And consciousness. Through a lifetime (or lifetimes, I don’t know) of practice you might come back to experience yourself as Singularity, but not in any innocent way like the infant but rather one of wisdom and expansiveness. You are now birthed as a new being. This is what it means to open to the sacred trinity within you to reveal your True Nature.

Exploring the Trinity with Yoga Nidra

My favorite way to explore, and even better to experience, this unity of the Trinity, and allow it to open our consciousness into a unity of all things, is through Yoga Nidra. Yoga Nidra is a form of relaxing guided meditation, or guided awareness, where the practitioner is lead through deepening layers of awareness to come to know themselves as Awareness itself. One does this through practicing recognizing then letting go of objects of the ego, like the body, energy, mind, thoughts, etc.

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Online Yoga Nidra: The Practice That Makes You Whole

More than a decade ago, I took a Yoga Nidra training. If you’ve never done it, Yoga Nidra acts like a guided meditation where you lay down, become very relaxed, and listen to a facilitator guide you through deepening layers of Awareness. During my training, though I hadn’t done very much Yoga Nidra at all, I nonetheless experienced a session that led me through one of the most profound experiences of my life. It was cosmic. It was expansive. It was healing. It was pure happiness. The effect was like someone pulling back the curtain in Oz to reveal... ME. The TRUE me.

This was one of the experiences that told me that I’d be practicing, studying, and teaching Yoga Nidra for the rest of my life. Yoga Nidra has become a veritable passion of mine.

One of the things I love about Yoga Nidra is that you don’t need to “earn” you way to having a profound experience. Not that a dedicated practice of Yoga Nidra or any discipline isn’t very beneficial. It’s just that Yoga Nidra, maybe even on your first session ever, has the power to to remind you, by way of first-hand experience, of who you are.

Like it says over the gates at the Oracle of Delphi, “KNOW THYSELF.” Yoga Nidra acts like an oracle who tells you who you really are, whispers to you your destiny. Knowing who you are makes you whole. It puts you into a right perspective of your world, your problems, and your priorities. It shows you your heart’s gift to the world.

Yoga Nidra is an ancient practice that has found a renaissance today. It’s just as relevant today as it was thousands of years ago because no matter when you live on this planet, one of humanity’s biggest problems has always been the simple but pervasive misapprehension that you are anything other than what you came from. In other words, Yoga Nidra’s superpower is to show you by direct experience that what you are is Source—call that whatever you want, a child of the Universe, a child of God, a child of Krusty The Clown—whatever.
With this sure knowledge of your True Being, you see your purpose and your life with immense clarity, beauty, and gratitude. With this sure knowledge, your entire life feels different. You don’t react to problems in the same way. You see a connectedness in everything. You begin to see everything as love.

And while not every person emerges from every Yoga Nidra session with a “hallelujah” on their lips, it’s nonetheless quite often a profound experience.

Yoga is defined classically as the “yoking” of all things to Oneness. Nidra literally means sleep but Yoga Nidra is more about waking up to your True Self than it is falling into a stupor. Nidra more appropriately means that hypnagogic state between dreaming and consciousness. When you are led into this relaxed state, you open yourself into a keener state of Awareness. Indeed you arrive to a place of deeply relaxed Awareness, the natural state of your True Self. In this state you can gain clarity, and find peace. You can heal physically, spiritually, mentally. Yoga Nidra is one practice that can help you feel yourself as Source, and as Source there’s nothing you can’t do, be, or love.

I’ve seen hundreds of people receive profound benefits from Yoga Nidra. Most of the time when I conduct a Yoga Nidra class, instead of telling students the benefits of Yoga Nidra, I ask those who have done it in the past to share what they’ve experienced by practicing it. My students have told me that Yoga Nidra has helped them with:

• Stress

• Sleep

• Productivity

• Relaxation

• Anger

• High blood pressure

• Depression

• Creativity

• Spirituality (whatever denomination or non-denomination you are)

• Performance

• Confidence

• Self-worth

• Trauma

• Happiness

• Love

• Forgiveness
  

So how does it work? How does lying down, getting relaxed, and listening to someone talk you through a meditation help you achieve these things? In Yoga Nidra, you practice heightened Awareness. This aligns you with your True Self because according to its ancient philosophy, at the end of the day, what you are is Awareness. Yoga Nidra differs from other forms of meditation in part because of its emphasis to identify the practitioner as Awareness itself. It can work these wonderful benefits through your life because when you experience yourself as Source, there’s nothing you lack. You can know that you are whole. Whole is another way of saying healed.

Practicing Yoga Nidra is easy. You simply lie down, become relaxed, and listen to a facilitator lead you into deepening layers of Awareness. It sounds crazy but it still works even if you fall asleep. The part of you that I’m speaking to in a Yoga Nidra meditation is still paying attention, even if your waking mind is sleeping. You don’t need to have ever practiced yoga or meditation to practice Yoga Nidra.

While practicing it is easy, teaching it effectively can be quite complicated. That’s why I’ve spent the last decade learning to teach this practice well, and have taught thousands of hours of Yoga Nidra in the process. I’ve even created an Online Yoga Nidra Teacher Training that has trained people around the world to teach this practice in their own voice to benefit the lives of their students.

One thing that my students have asked for regularly is to curate a Yoga Nidra experience that focuses on a particular benefit, like stress, forgiveness, or sleep. I’ve taught many private sessions to individuals where we go into depth on a personal issue and use Yoga Nidra to help them find their own solace, calm, and peace. Yoga Nidra helps people heal themselves.

With the idea that there are many people who need something particular from a Yoga Nidra experience, I’ve decided to create a volume of Yoga Nidra recordings that can be accessed anytime. These recordings will vary in length from 15–35 minutes, and will be curated around an intent or goal. One session for managing anxiety, another to manage anger, another to practice compassion, etc.

This will be a volume of around 15 Yoga Nidra recordings that can be downloaded to a phone, computer, or tablet. It will also come with a nice and neat booklet that gives information and helpful tips on getting the most out of your Yoga Nidra practice, and some supplemental breathing and mindfulness practices.

I’m currently building this project and I’m taking suggestions for subjects. If there’s a Yoga Nidra practice you’d like to have access to regularly, please let me know what you want. Say you want a Yoga Nidra practice to help you relax at the end of the day. Maybe you want a Yoga Nidra practice to help you have focus and clarity at the beginning of the day. Maybe you work with insomnia and would love something to help you sleep better. I’m open to suggestions, so please let me know what you’d like.

I’m also going to start holding a regular, live Yoga Nidra class online at the same time each week. This is open to anyone, no matter where you live in the world, and will start with each person registering for each class as a drop-in. Class will cost $12. This online Yoga Nidra class will be starting Sunday, November 3rd at 9 am MST. You can do this class from the comfort of your own home, wherever you live in the world. Each class will have a brief discussion about Yoga Nidra, will be centered on a theme, and will include some mindfulness and breathwork practices. There will be a 30–40 minute Yoga Nidra practice with each online session. The entire session will last 60–75 minutes. These live sessions will give you the chance to share your experiences with Yoga Nidra with others and ask any questions.

I will be recording these classes so if you love the topic of the class but can’t make it, you can still register and have the recording after. Everyone who purchases the class will have access to the recording.

Also, if you think you could benefit from a private, one-one-one Yoga Nidra session with me, we can arrange a live, virtual session. Or maybe you have a very specific need for a Yoga Nidra recording. I can make you your own personal Yoga Nidra recording tailored to meet your specific needs.

If you love Yoga Nidra or are interested in any of these offerings please:

Email me at scott@scottmooreyoga.com and let me know if there’s a practice you’d like to see on this first volume of recordings.

Register for the live Yoga Nidra class on Sunday, November 3rd at 9:00 am MST

Contact me to book your own private Yoga Nidra session.

Fill out this form to request your own private Yoga Nidra recording tailored to your specific needs ($100)

Please enjoy this Free Yoga Nidra recording I made about connecting to the heart. This is powerful

Nice to Be Back: A Return Trip from Hell

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Photo by Alex Adams

I’m sitting at a park in Nice having just arrived home on Wednesday after the a return trip from hell.

I left for Salt Lake City airport at 8:30 am Monday morning and didn’t arrive in Nice for another 42 hours. I had 4 legs of the journey (I know, the added price of a cheap airline ticket is the pain-in-the-ass tax) My second leg was delayed significantly—I had to hang at Oakland International for 12 hours! From Oakland I flew to Stockholm and was able to catch an earlier flight toward my next connection in Copenhagen in the stretched out saga to get back to my loves in Nice but the airline had scheduled me to land and catch my next flight with only 15 minutes to get from one gate to the next and the gate was all the way across to the other side of the airport. I landed in Copenhagen, rushed off the plane and sprinted like an airport olympian. I made it to the gate in record time but nonetheless got there right as the plane was scheduled to depart. They’d closed the boarding and even though the plane was sitting there, staring at me smugly through the window, they wouldn’t let me board. Then, to add insult to injury, they said that the next flight to Nice wasn’t until the following day and that I’d have to spend the night in Copenhagen. Then, if this weren’t bad enough, they didn’t know where my bag was so I had to go to the hotel without a change of clothes or my toothbrush.

And as I was walking through the Copenhagen airport, tired and cranky, I reminded myself over and over the essential lesson I learned from Lionel Richie which is, “I don’t need to have an opinion about this. It’s all just information. I’ll just make the situation worse by complaining about it. Just do whatever you need to in order to get to the hotel.” Once I got the the airline fix-it desk, they had a hotel voucher waiting for me, they had arranged a taxi ride both to the hotel and back to the airport for me, and had given me a meal voucher. When I got to the hotel I was pleased that it was lovely and before long, I was relaxing in a nice, quiet, and comfortable room having showered and lounging in bed with room service and Netflix. I thought to myself, I’d rather be snuggling with my loves in Nice but I gotta say, as a consolation, this really isn’t bad. I turned off the lights and sank into an incredibly soft bed in a wonderfully quiet room.

The change of timezones caused me to wake up at 4 am feeling rested and alert and I enjoyed the quiet of the morning with a very centering 30-minute meditation. I’m in the middle of my 30-day meditation challenge and I’m loving the ritual of a daily meditation. After another shower, coffee, and breakfast, I decided to go on a walk through Copenhagen before I took a taxi back to the airport. I immediately fell in love with Copenhagen. The early-autumn morning was cool and crisp having rained much of the night before. To me it looked like everyone had just walked out of the European equivalent of an Eddie Bower magazine. And one of the things that struck me was the bike lanes teaming with cyclists on their way to work. People were friendly and polite and my walk completely set my mood for my final flight back to Nice.

Despite rush hour traffic, I got the airport in plenty of time. The Copenhagen airport has got to be the friendliest, cleanest, most modern and civilized airports in the world. Have you been there? The security lines were quick, automated, and efficient and the personnel were all smiles and courtesy, a stark contrast to the TSA in the Oakland airport who barked orders at the long lines of doe-eyed travelers. After going through security, which was decidedly a pleasant experience, I had plenty of time to wander around the airport. This airport was lovely! If I lived in Copenhagen, I would almost want to buy an airplane ticket somewhere just so I could have an excuse to hang out at the airport, it was that nice.

I got on my last flight without issue and landed in Nice. It was so great to get back. Funny how even though I’ve only lived in Nice for 8 months it felt so much like coming home when I saw that beautiful coastline and azure waters out of the airplane window. As I stepped off the plane, I was met with warm and slightly humid air and I took a fat breath in followed by a sigh of relief. They had found my bag and I was grateful for that. I jumped on the tram and it made for a very easily trip to our apartment. Seneca and Elio met me at the tram stop and as soon as I stepped off Elio saw me at ran, jumped in my arms and held on tight and didn’t let go for several minutes. We had a lovely 3-way hug for a long wile, reuniting and kissing and loving each other. I’d been gone for almost 5 weeks, waaay too long, and it was such a beautiful reunion.

We changed apartments since I left for the states and Sen and Elio took me back to our new digs and showed me around. It’s small and quaint but works great for our family. It’s in a part of town we love and we’re quite happy there.

The weather is lovely in Nice, in the mid-70s and sunny. Sen made us a lovely lunch of salad and lentil soup and after we strolled down to the beach and sat on a straw mat as we opened a bottle of Rosé. Then Elio stripped down to his unds and I rolled up my pants as we waded into the surf and I threw rocks into the ocean.

It’s so nice to be back with my loves. I love France!

It’s great to be back and I also loved being in the States! I really loved teaching all the classes, workshops, trainings and retreats. I really had a marvelous time. This adventure in France has been really wonderful and has given me an opportunity to focus on my writing. I spent a good part of the summer on a writing project that I’ll let you know about soon. I can’t say much about it yet but I recently sent my final edits off to a publisher so if it all goes as planned, I’ll have a big announcement by the end of the year. So that’s thrilling. More about that later . . .

I taught a yoga retreat with my dear friend Kim in Tuscany this summer and have been teaching a few classes at a studio in Nice but have been spending most of my working time writing and supporting my online offerings like my Online Yoga Nidra Teacher Training. So it was nice to come back to the states and do a lot of teaching. It was really great to connect with friends and students and it was great to be reminded that my teaching makes a difference to people. I can’t tell you what that means to me. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

So, now that I’m back in France, what’s next for me . . .

Luxury Yoga Retreat at a Bordeaux Château

Well, if you haven’t heard already, I’m hoping that you’ll join me for my next big European yoga retreat in June of 2020. I’ve always wanted to host a yoga retreat at a Chateau in France. I lived in Bordeaux for 2 years more than 20 years ago, that’s how I learned to speak French. I absolutely adore this region and I’ve always thought that it would be such an adventure to revisit and host a yoga retreat. So, I researched online and found THE PERFECT place and this spring, Sen, Elio, and I drove out there to see for ourselves if it was as good as it looked online. And it was like 10x better than it looked online. This place has been owned by the same family for more than 400 years and was sold to the current owners about 20 years ago who renovated it, keeping its natural splendor but updating it, sprucing it up, and adding a few essentials like a beautiful indoor yoga room as well as an outdoor yoga deck. Oh, and an incredible swimming pool outdoors. This place has an incredible history including underground tunnels which were used to hide people in the 100 years war as well as allied spies in WWII. I’m billing this yoga retreat as a “luxury” yoga retreat. You’ve got to see the bedrooms in this place, each one looks like it should be a suite in the most expensive French hotel ever. The pictures are absolutely amazing and rest assured that they don’t do this place justice.

So, at this retreat we’re going to spend 6 days together doing all-levels yoga, breath work, meditation and Yoga Nidra and also enjoying ourselves as we lounge around the pool, take French cooking classes, and if you want to, biking around and exploring the vineyards and countryside. We are going to take a day-excursion to one of Bordeaux’s most notable vineyards, the world-class Saint-Émilion. We’ll also have a sommelier come in to the chateau for our own private wine tasting. I find that wine pairs very well with Yoga.

The theme for this retreat will be learning to savor your life with presence. The idea is that without presence even a life-changing retreat in France will go unnoticed. With presence, everything in your life is a miracle. Many of the spots are sold already but I still have some left. Don’t worry about the time off work, I spoke to your boss and they said that it’s fine to have the time off. Also, this retreat is set up really well for you if you wanted to bring a friend, spouse, or partner. Maybe you’re celebrating an anniversary, or a special birthday, or just want a mindful and delicious vacation your favorite person ever. Plan on this joining me. If your special person doesn’t do yoga, no worries. They can come and enjoy all of the OTHER, amazing things in this area.

This retreat is going down during the best week of the year to be in France— it’ll be from June 13–19 of 2020.

AND, since I love France and have come to love Paris so much, I’m also offering a Prelude in Paris, it’s a three-day pre-treat al personally guided walking tour through some of my favorite places in Paris. I’ll personally walk you around and show you some of my favorite neighborhoods, some of the lesser-known but fascinating corners of that incredible city, as well as some of the best museums, quaint cafes, and best shopping spots in perhaps the most romantic city in the world. Then, when that’s done, we can take a short flight or train ride from Paris down to Bordeaux for the Chateau retreat.

Even though this is going to be a luxury retreat, I’ve still priced this to be affordable. I’ve got a few spots left and I’d love to have you join me. Please go to scottmooreyoga.com, under Courses, Retreats, and Events, go to Bordeaux Yoga Retreat, and make your deposit for this adventure. This will certainly be epic and I want you to come so do what you need to do to make this happen.

New Online Yoga Nidra Teacher Training

Also, I wanted to tell you that the last few days that I was in Salt Lake City, I connected with my friend and filmmaker, Natalie Cass to film a new Online Yoga Nidra teacher training. A while ago I launched an online Yoga Nidra teacher training and I’ve been immensely pleased by all the responses I’ve received. I’m thrilled that people from all over the world are discovering this training and using it to learn how to teach what I feel is one of the most fascinating practices EVER in a way that trains people to deliver this practice uniquely and with their own voice.

I’m always looking for ways to make my offerings better and better so I thought I’d take the time to take this Online Yoga Nidra teacher training to the next level. I just barely filmed it and I’m looking forward to the editing process. I am organizing this training to be more comprehensive, more accessible, and frankly, more beautiful.

This training will be a multi-media experience that gives you a ton of information about the in-depth philosophy behind Yoga Nidra as well as how to teach it effectively. There will be easily digestible videos, a full Yoga Nidra library, PDFs, handouts, stories, chants, links, and other stuff to give you an excellent Yoga Nidra education. By the end of the training, you’ll get a certificate of completion and you’ll have all the tools and experience necessary to teach Yoga Nidra with your own voice. It even counts as continuing education hours with Yoga Alliance. If you’re interested in learning more about Yoga Nidra check it out. Plus, if you register for my existing training which is already amazing, as soon as the new training is done, you’ll get the second one FOR. FREE.

New Yoga Nidra Course Coming…

Also, If you’re interested in how Yoga Nidra can benefit your every-day life but not necessarily interested in teaching it, I’ll be offering a new Yoga Nidra course next month so stay tuned for that, it’s going to be amazing.

Global Story Jam

So, I’m a storyteller at heart and whenever I’m in Salt Lake City, I love to attend a storytelling event called the Bee. On several occasions I’ve told stories there, along with several other storytellers, in front of hundreds of people and I did so recently just before leaving Salt Lake CityI had such a blast doing it. The Bee archives many of the stories so if you ever want to hear some of those stories I’ve told you can click the link here.

Anyway, several months ago, I hosted what’s called a Speakeasy, where I invited a bunch of people to get together at a friend’s house and we all brought drinks and food to share and I spent the evening telling some truly heart-felt stories. We cried and laughed together and had a very special evening and by the end of the evening I felt very close to everyone.

I’d love to do another storytelling event but this time with a different twist. This time I’d like to invite you to tell the stories. I’m calling it Global Story Jam. My vision is to have a global storytelling event where everyone who wants to can share a story based on the theme: Shocked. It’ll be a live, virtual storytelling experience and it’s going to be incredible. What we’ll do is log on to zoom all across the world at the same time and everyone who wants to tell a story will submit their names to be selected randomly. I’ll announce names in real-time and that person can tell their stories. Everyone will get 5 minutes to tell a story. It’s going to be so much fun! This will be Saturday, October 12th at 10 am to 12 pm MST (you can do the math for whichever time zone you live in).

200-Hr. Yoga Teacher Training Certification

Another project I’ve been working on this summer is to get approved to be a registered yoga school with Yoga Alliance. I’ve created curriculum for universities which was a piece of cake compared to the effort of getting my curriculum approved for Yoga Alliance. Anyway, if you’d like to study with me and earn your 200-hr Yoga Alliance teacher certification, let me know. I’d like to start a program around the beginning of the year. I’d like to gauge interest on this so give me a shout out if you would like to do something like this.

Yoga Teacher Mentor Program

If you’re already a yoga teacher and would like to up-level your teaching with a private teacher mentor program I’ve also got one or two spots open. Maybe you need to gain confidence as a teacher and get some personalized feedback about your teaching. Maybe you’d like to learn how to conduct workshops, masterclasses, and retreats. Maybe you need help getting you yoga teaching business up to speed. I’ve mentored many teachers who’ve been interested in improving their teaching. If you’re interested we’ll chat and see if we are a right fit for each other. Then, what I’ll have you do is take a strengths test to illuminate to us both how you operate best. Then we figure out your long-term and short-term goals and from there we set up regular appointments where my job is to give you information and encouragement and accountability as you steadily work toward those goals. My goal is to have this mentorship pay for itself right away as the result of your improved teaching and teaching opportunities that result from this mentorship and of course have this new information surge you forward in your career. Often times, what I’ve found is that existing teachers don’t need another training to know more, they need a mentorship with someone who’s doing what they’d like to be doing. If that speaks to you, please let me know. I’d love to work with you and help you shape your own teaching. I believe that you have unique gifts that allow you to teach people in only the way that you can. Let’s work together to get your voice heard.

There are more things I’d love to tell you about but they’ll have to wait.

Thanks for listening. Thanks for all of your love. Thanks as always for pickin’ up what I’m puttin’ down.

Whatever You Believe In, Practice It Every Day.

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So, you may have heard me tell this story before but several years ago, I was leading myself through a deep Yoga Nidra meditation. My aim for this meditation was to channel the wise person that resides within my own heart to see what kind of message my own inner wise person would give me. I got very relaxed and went deep. Really deep.

I tried to think of the wisest person I knew immediately an image of one of my favorite professors from college jumped into my mind. In this vision, completely of my own imagination, I was sitting in his office and asking him for some guidance. In my mind, I could see the tawny grain of the wood of his desk. I could hear the soft buzz of the fluorescent lights above muted slightly by the plaintive squeak of his office chair as leaned back to think to survey the ceiling. He stroked his beard as he thought about what to say to me. Then, he looked at me slyly with a sideways glance and said something I’ll never forget. He said, “Whatever you believe in, practice it every day,” and then simply nodded.

“Whatever you believe in, practice it every day!” That revelation hit me like a ton of Norton Anthology of Poetry books. It was my own inner-wisdom reminding me of the importance of a daily practice

30-Day Meditation Challenge

If the wise person inside of you also values a daily practice, if meditation is something you believe in or are at least curious about, and if you want to explore what happens when you make meditation a daily practice, I invite you to register for my 30-Day Meditation challenge. It begins September 1st and runs for 30 days. It’s going to be fun and easy. All you do is meditate for 15 minutes a day, every day for 30 days. You’ll start to notice right away how you become more mindful, more calm, less provoked, and less reactive. Everyone you live with and work with will wonder what has happened to you.

Once you register for the challenge, you’ll start to receive emails that will support you with information, guidance, and encouragement about making meditation a regular practice for the month of September. You can do this challenge wherever you live in the world. You can meditate at any time of day that works best for you, and choose any style of meditation that suits you. I’ll give you several options that you can choose from if you’re newer to meditation

This costs $30 and if you complete all 30 days you can even have the option to receive your tuition back.

Tell your friends that you’ll be doing this to help keep you accountable and even invite them to join you because there’s nothing like mindfulness to bind a friendship together.

This thing starts Sunday, September 1st so sign up now and start your meditation practice now.

If you’re in NYC, I’ll be coming to town the first week of September and offering two amazing workshops. The first will be a Yoga Nidra for Happiness workshop at Pure Yoga West on Wednesday, September 4th from 6:30–9 pm. We will explore through poses, discussion, and Yoga Nidra the happiness that exists always within you despite events and circumstances. I’m really excited to offering a workshop at my old studio and hope you join me if you live in NYC. Also, I’ll be co-hosting a Yoga Nidra and Freeing breathwork workshop with an amazing teacher Tiffany Curren at Nirvana Yoga and Wellness in Wayne, New Jersey the next day on Thursday, September 5th from 6:30–9 pm. I’m really excited to work with Tiffany and this will be an incredible offering. If you live in the area, I’d love to see you at one or both of these events. I’m not sure when I’ll be back to this area.

Thanks for considering all of these offerings. Please forward this email by pressing the share link either below in the email or the Facebook share and like button near the top of the page if you’re listening to this email via my blog.

Hey, thanks again for being you and everything you do

And most of all, thanks for pickin’ up what I’m puttin’ down.