Santosha and Valuing Perplexity

Everybody has problems. We all struggle with what we don’t know about our own complicated lives. Of course, we want solutions to our problems tout suite, and if we could gain those solutions as painlessly as possible, that would be great. Consider, though, that our problems actually help us to become the people we are meant to be. So, how do problems, the yogic concept of Santosha, Yoga Nidra and learning to sit in the darkness sometimes, help us to do this essential growth?

Problems Can Give A Push

Sometimes, it is only by questioning, wondering, or struggling, that we are driven to understand an otherwise hidden part of ourselves and our potential. Our questions and problems fuel us to open our hearts, to seek for inspiration, to perform the necessary work, and more profoundly, to abandon our will to the grander wisdom of the divine. The Divine knows how easy it is to be anesthetized by easy and numbed out by normal. Comfortable can sometimes get in the way of us becoming the greatest version of ourselves.

Light Creeping In

Like the late, great Leonard Cohen says in his song, "Anthem":

“Ring the bells that still can ring;
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything;
That’s how the light gets in.”

— Leonard Cohen

Even the rhyme is broken! He's pointing to the idea that it's through our brokenness, through our problems that we find the avenue toward the light.

Yoga Nidra and Observing Problems

When faced with problems, we must at once be willing to seek and do, and also we must sometimes learn to simply sit comfortably and be with what we don't know or with what doesn't feel comfortable-happily resolved with the phrase, "I don't know." And sometimes to get real answers we must be willing to sit in our own darkness for a while. One way to learn to do this is through Yoga Nidra, the yoga of sleep. Yoga Nidra is a practice of guided meditation that leads you through layered awareness and deep relaxation to practice learning to simply witness whatever is presented to your attention, be that emotions, problems, physical sensations or whatever. It helps you to practice experiencing yourself as Awareness itself, as Source, which has no needs, problems, or issues. Then, when this awareness is married back to you every-day life, the part of you that feels like it does have problems, you have such an incredible perspective over your life’s problems. Yoga Nidra is one of the ways that you can cultivate the power to be able to sit with your problems without allowing them to feel like they control your life.

This human tendency for control occurs regularly in our yoga practice as many of us strive to either know everything there is to know about yoga or try to perfect our poses; we usually eagerly fill in whatever blanks present themselves in our life's scripts.

Instead, let us practice the yoga principle of Santosha, or contentment, by learning to sit with and even value perplexity, knowing that it's molding us into our highest being.

Sitting in the Dark

The following poem by David Whyte seems to speak directly to learning from the darkness, instead of running from it.

Sweet Darkness

When your eyes are tired

the world is tired also.

When your vision has gone

no part of the world can find you.

Time to go into the dark

where the night has eyes

to recognize its own.

There you can be sure

you are not beyond love.

The dark will be your womb

tonight.

The night will give you a horizon

further than you can see.

You must learn one thing:

the world was made to be free in.

Give up all the other worlds

except the one to which you belong.

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet

confinement of your aloneness

to learn

anything or anyone

that does not bring you alive

is too small for you.

~ David Whyte ~

Yoga: Playing With The Metaphor

Since my first yoga class ever, I’ve been asking the question, “So what. What is yoga, how does it help me discover who I am? Why is it beneficial, and what does it have to do with a regular guy?” I asked myself, "Is this just another heath program? Is it meditation in motion? Is it maybe a physical rite on the way to spiritual end?” These are the questions I’m still asking and what I try to answer in my Yoga Nidra Trainings.

And 20 years later, I realize that it’s all of these and much more. I suppose that all these years later, I'm still asking that same question, “What is this?” Over the years, when I think that I’ve maybe got a handle on what yoga is, when I’ve think I’ve figured it out, I experience or discover something new about yoga and I have to expand my definition to include something bigger.

Yoga Nidra is yoga. It feels like a relaxing guided meditation but it’s yoga. How come it’s considered yoga? Well, I think according to the definition of yoga it is a practice that helps to move us toward yoga’s end: to connect body, mind, and spirit and as we “cease the fluctuations of the mind,” definition as per the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. Instead of moving the bod to be aware of the bod, we are simply aware of it as sensation. No movement necessary.

I believe that everybody must have their own definition of yoga. My current working definition (subject to change):

Yoga is the processes of understanding who I am through the method of listening.

That’s it. It’s pretty stripped down. You may notice that I didn't even say anything about asana. Of course, one of the ways I “listen” is by feeling and becoming aware of my body.

There are many ways to understanding what and who I am. I think understanding myself begins with understanding the grossest levels of awareness. The Yoga Sutras suggest how I treat other people and the ways I choose to organize my life is perhaps the first way of understanding myself. Then, I get to apply that same sort of attention and organization to something practical and close to home: my own physical body. If I'm paying close attention to my body in my poses and how I take care of myself, it might help me become more sensitive to more subtle parts of myself like my energy body. I will then discover how my body and energy dance together.

By the way, I'm convinced that the body isn't merely something to transcend on our way to higher understanding. The body is one of the most practical ways of feeling and experiencing my own divinity. After all, if you've ever seen someone who is extremely physically adept, like Michal Jordan or Mikhail Baryshnikov, it looks like you're witnessing God. And indeed to some degree you are. You're witnessing someone so developed in that line of understanding that they are reaching a sublime state of being.

Our physical body gives us such immediate and practical information about our being. And, because this is the vehicle, the container, of heart and mind, it makes sense to not only learn from it, but to also keep it healthy so that it can take us where we want to go. Besides, it's fun. It feels good. What could heaven possibly be but some variation of those two things. Even when I experience love, I can only do that through the nuts and bolts of this body. When my heart feels like it's going to grow bigger than my chest and burst out of it, or like it's being stepped on and smooshed black, it's still within the container of my body that I experience and understand that.

Yoga Nidra Training

In a Yoga Nidra practice, one way I use my body to cultivate greater Awareness and come to “cease the fluctuations” of my mind, is to do a Sanctuary Practice. The Sanctuary Practice uses visualization and an incitement of one’s senses to evoke the feelings one has in their most favorite place. This use of one’s senses to evoke one’s personal inner-sanctuary acts like a metaphor to help someone experience the way they most naturally feel as an expression of the Oneness. Whether there in real-life or visualizing the sanctuary, each acts as a metaphor for how one’s most natural comportment.

Similarly, the body acts as a metaphor for us to help understand that eternal part of us that cannot be defined by something so limited and finite. Nonetheless, it’s a great tool to bring context to something that is otherwise perhaps unknowable.

As I think about this question of ‘what is yoga and how does it help me understand who I am’ when I’m doing yoga and Yoga Nidra. Please enjoy my free Sanctuary Practice which you can download/listen to below.

Someone who understood this beautifully is Mary Oliver in her poem about this discovery of who we are through listening and how the body plays a vital role in that discovery. I'm convinced that Mary Oliver is a yogi but who works with a pen rather than a mat. Check it out.

POEM (The Spirit Likes To Dress Up)

The spirit

likes to dress up like this:

ten fingers,

ten toes,

shoulders, and all the rest

at night

in the black branches,

in the morning

in the blue branches

of the world.

It could float, of course,

but would rather

plumb rough matter.

Airy and shapeless thing,

it needs

the metaphor of the body,

lime and appetite,

the oceanic fluids;

it needs the body’s world,

instinct

and imagination

and the dark hug of time,

sweetness

and tangibility,

to be understood,

to be more than pure light

that burns

where no one is –

so it enters us –

in the morning

shines from brute comfort

like a stitch of lightning;

and at night

lights up the deep and wondrous

drownings of the body

like a star.”

― Mary Oliver, Dream Work

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Yoga Nidra Dyad

Yoga Nidra Dyad

What’s a Yoga Nidra Dyad, why can’t you make a Yoga Nidra script for a dyad, and why are Yoga Nidra dyads so transformational?

Yoga Nidra: The Yoga of Sleep

Yoga Nidra is called the “yoga of sleep” but don’t let the name fool you, it’s actually a pathway to waking up. What you wake up from is the illusion that your life is ordinary, predictable, and broken. What you wake up to is the magnificence of your True Nature, that of Awareness itself. This “waking up” not only makes for transformational personal and spiritual growth, healing, and wholeness, but most satisfyingly helps you to live your current life, rich with joy, clarity, and presence.

Yoga Nidra is a pathway to inquire into and cultivate a tangible relationship with your most eternal and perfect Self, that of Awareness itself. To rediscover your essential Self, one must cultivate greater Awareness by first dis-identifying as all illusory parts of our being, our ego. The ego in this context is any finite, limited, or changeable part of being, e.g., body, energy, thoughts, etc. In other words, your ego is anything that’s not your eternal Self, the part that comes from Source. In Yoga Nidra, another name for the layers of your ego is the maya koshas, a Sanskrit word meaning “the sheaths of illusion.”

Maya Koshas: The Layers of Illusion

Yoga Nidra uses the maya koshas, the sheaths that obfuscate your True Nature of pure Awareness, as the essential tools to illuminate Awareness. This happens because through all the things you can be aware of, you illuminate Awareness itself. Yoga Nidra leads you to be aware of your body, your emotions, your thoughts, etc, the shows you that what those all have in common is that you’re aware of them. Essentially, instead of identifying as the costumes, the changeable and illusory elements like body emotions, thoughts, etc., Yoga Nidra helps you understand yourself as the thing that underneath the costume, Awareness. BUT, since the costumes are part of our existence, we get to put on the costumes again but with increased clarity, purpose, and perspective. Yoga Nidra is an incredible practice that helps you live more fully because you’re more sure of your True identity.

“Great, I’m Awareness. That that still doesn’t explain how one practices Yoga Nidra.”

Well, most often Yoga Nidra feels like a guided meditation where the practitioner invites you to relax and helps you do so by layering your Awareness. In other words, the facilitator invites you to be aware of your maya koshas which are (but not limited to) body, energy/emotions, thoughts, beliefs, and even bliss. Practitioners are invited to merely witness whatever arises in their field of attention (so long as it feels safe and doesn’t trigger trauma), whether by the facilitators suggestion or if it arises spontaneously.

You’ll often start a Yoga Nidra practice with an intention for practicing called a Sankalpa, establish an inner-sanctuary through a brief visualization, then the facilitator will invite you to be aware of your maya koshas by leading you through something like a body scan, then onto your prana layer, emotions, thoughts, etc. all the while practicing merely welcoming, recognizing, and witnessing whatever arises in your Awareness.

This gets a little meta but hang with me …

How Opposites Reveal the Oneness

Throughout the practice, a facilitator may invite the practitioner to be aware of opposites—feeling right hand then left hand, for example. At first, the facilitator invites the practitioner to merely witness the two objects as separate sensations. Then, the facilitator may have the practitioner experience them simultaneously. The part of you that can witness two seemingly opposite things is that which does not exist in the realm of opposites. The part that can feel both simultaneously is the part of your that is the Oneness, Source, Awareness itself. See where I’m going with this??? This action of holding opposites overrides the rational thinking mind, one of the most pernicious koshas—great for studying for the bar exam, terrible for experiencing the realm of Oneness.

The maya koshas such as the mind are illusions because they are changeable, here one moment gone the next. They exist in a realm of binaries, one of this or that, have or have not. What ancient wisdom teaches and what Yoga Nidra helps you to experience (not just theorize about) is that the part of you that never changes is Awareness. It’s also Source itself. So, Yoga Nidra helps practitioners identify as unchanging Awareness rather than the changeable koshas. Read more about how opposites reveal Oneness

Awareness is your True Nature, that which is aligned with and as Source. It’s your most natural way of being. It’s just that we naturally tend to identify as all the stuff that we can feel, touch, see, think, emote, etc. The problem is that all that stuff is changing all the time and can never be the eternal, most real part of our Being, the part that always is. But don’t despair because those parts exist as the best tools we have to illuminate what we truly are, Awareness itself.

“Ok, cool. I can experience myself as Awareness by layered awareness and by negating opposites. What is a dyad again?”

So, a Yoga Nidra dyad is essentially doing what Yoga Nidra is so good at doing, coming to know your True Self (Awareness) though all the objects you can be aware of, but instead of following a facilitator’s suggested layering of objects to be aware of, the practitioner instead indicates what they are aware of in the moment and the facilitator helps them to simply witness those things. In this way, instead of the facilitator leading the practice, I like to think that it’s the practitioner who is directing the show.

Why Dyads Are So Effective

The facilitator’s role is to inquire the practitioner what the practitioner is aware of, invite them to merely welcome, recognize, and witness whatever that is, and track the changeability of those objects. Perhaps the facilitator’s most important role is to keep reminding the practitioner that they are Awareness itself experiencing themselves in the form of whatever they are aware of.

This process of reflective awareness provides an incredible clarity and perspective about any objects which present themselves in a practitioners life, from emotions, events, physical or energetic or spiritual ailments. Essentially, when one knows themselves as Awareness itself—pure, whole, and complete—life’s problems seem to have a finite context. Great insight, healing, and transformation comes readily when someone is presented with their whole and complete Self. This process of clarity happens more readily because the facilitator can help the practitioner follow that which is most present in their field of Awareness, that which is actually calling the practitioner to wake up and pay attention.

Each object in your field of attention is actually inviting you to do one thing and that is to wake up and pay attention. Each object is arousing your capacity for Awareness. A dyad is so powerful because instead of inviting the practitioner to accept this or that into their field of awareness (as organized and deliberate as that method is to promote awareness), instead, the facilitator follows what is naturally and most poignantly asking the practitioner to wake up and pay attention to.

This is huge! It shows us that whatever we’ve been looking for in life is right around us at all times. It’s like having a massive wake-up moment, like a near-death experience or something, where you see the purpose of it all, then go back into your regular life and see all the same stuff but with new eyes. Certainly, not everyone comes out of every session having, “seen the light,” but it’s remarkable how many people experience incredible and lasting transformation from their very first session, either in a commonly led Yoga Nidra experience and especially in a Yoga Nidra dyad.

Why You Can’t Have a Yoga Nidra Script for a Dyad

You can’t make a script for a dyad because there’s no way you could predict what would arise in the practitioners awareness. It takes a broad perspective and understanding of Yoga Nidra as well an intuition and sensitivity to skillfully and compassionately lead a practitioner through a Yoga Nidra dyad.

Would you be interested in learning how to facilitate Yoga Nidra dyads? You can join me Saturday, September 26th from 9 am to 12 pm MDT for a training and practice of doing just this. The workshop will be recorded so you can watch it later in case you can’t make the live session.

You’ll learn:

• Why dyads are so effective

• How to practice them safely with your clients

• The essential guide to dyads, The Yoga Nidra Dyad Roadmap

• How to ascertain your student’s needs in the pre-screening

• How to use the koshas as tools to affect transformation

• The art of reflective Awareness

• How to ground and navigate your student’s awareness

• How to manage and facilitate emotions

• How to help your students process and integrate the experience

• Helpful professional, logistical, and tech tips.

This will be a virtual and recorded workshop via Zoom. You’ll have the opportunity to practice dyads with each other in breakout rooms. You’ll also have the opportunity to ask specific questions to your experience after your practice.

The world needs expert Yoga Nidra teachers. Become a masterful Yoga Nidra facilitator by learning Yoga Nidra dyads

Each person who registers will receive a recording of the workshop so even if you can’t make the time work for you, you may register and watch the training at your own convenience.

Counts as continuing education with Yoga Alliance!

Change is In The Air

First day of fall. School has started (Zoom kindergarten is a blessing and a curse). Schedules are changing, becoming more busy, even despite the pandemic. The crescendo of political, social, and global noise is getting louder.

Leaves are changing.

Things are always changing. I don't know about you, but for me it's easy to get caught up in the momentum of this motion of change to the degree that it becomes impossible to avoid feeling constantly rushed, out of time, and strained. Ever find yourself asking, "When can a person take a breather?!"

I think once we realize that there is a possibility of stillness IN the change, we will find our mooring against the tides of change. We can skillfully navigate all the vicissitudes of life by creating a grounded seat from which all this change may happen around us without making us lose our center.

With a grounded relationship to change, you'll find yourselves not only able to navigate change but even thriving with change.

Here are a few ideas to help us stay grounded amidst change.

Simple Meditation Technique

Find a quiet place where you can possibly be undisturbed for a few moments (sometimes this is sitting in your car). Sit comfortably and set a timer for 10 minutes. Close your eyes and begin to count your exhales. If your mind wanders or you lose your count, start over with the counting. The objective is not to count to some outrageously high number, but rather to continue to come back to center when you leave. We all wander so there's no judgment when you do. Try doing this every day. You may want to extend the time to 15, 20, or 30 minutes.

Get Outside

Make a point to go on a gentle walk and leave your phone behind. Find the joy in walking for the sake of walking. Inform yourself of the natural world and notice the trees, sky, flowers, etc. Wallace Stevens said, "Perhaps the truth depends upon a walk around the lake." When placing yourself in nature, you often remind yourself both of life's natural cycles as well as your own belonging to this beautiful and complex world.

Find an Online Yoga or Meditation Class

Find an online yoga class to class or roll out your mat and begin to move and breathe. I teach a few classes a week (including one today at 12 pm MDT) which you can join virtually and/or watch the recordings later. I also teach one class a week at Mosaic Yoga (Mon. 5:30 pm) where you can join live with a responsible socially-distanced protocol.

If you're practicing poses on your own, match your breath with the poses that your body seems to crave. If you’re practicing on your own, don't worry about practicing for a certain amount of time, just practice whatever feels the most natural. Allow your body the pleasure of gently warming up then release tensions with some long, slow, deep stretches. Give yourself several moments to rest in savasana and then go about your day.

With some help is keeping us grounded, we'll find ourselves ready to meet the changes that are unfolding.

Healing with Yoga Nidra

Yoga Nidra is like a guided meditation that leads people through deepening layers of Awareness through a very relaxing process of listening. Different from many other forms of meditation or mindfulness, Yoga Nidra does not insist a person focus on any one thing at the exclusion of others. Rather, the direction in the practice is to relax and simply welcome into your Awareness whatever arises, to acknowledge that object for what it is and without assessment, then to merely be the witness of it. Such a practice helps you to dis-identify from the things you might be aware of and find yourself aligning as Awareness itself. You become Awareness itself trying all the things you may be aware of like a costume. The effect of this expansive Awareness practice is not only very illuminating, it’s also incredibly relaxing. What’s even more interesting is that Yoga Nidra can be extremely therapeutic and has been known to facilitate broad-spectrum healing of body, mind, and spirit. 

Practitioners regularly assert that Yoga Nidra has helped them heal from myriad issues and maladies including, insomnia, anxiety, high blood pressure, grief, and even trauma. How does this practice which acts like a relaxing guided meditation help practitioners to arrive at greater wholeness in body, mind, and spirit? 

To discover the ways in which this fabulous and relaxing form of mindfulness heals, it’s important to understand the essential purpose of the practice. The purpose of Yoga Nidra is to dis-identify with what we typically and erroneously feel is us—our body, emotions, thoughts, etc.—and learn to align yourself with your True Nature which is Awareness itself. Truly, you are Awareness in the form of all the things you can be aware of, such as body, emotions, thoughts, etc. You are the beautiful marriage of infinite consciousness married to the finite form of your body and suchness of your life. Yoga Nidra is an easy, practical, and enjoyable way to develop a tangible relationship with that marriage of consciousness and form. 

Yoga Nidra leans on ancient wisdom (Tantra) which suggests that everything in the Universe, including and especially ourselves, comes from Source. Source is whole, full, complete, and rests in a state of boundless equanimity, a quality that feels like an eternal love—one big, fat YES! from the Universe. This ancient wisdom also suggests that our True Nature is synonymous with Awareness. If you are Awareness, the more you lean into your essential being by practicing prolonged states of attention and by welcoming, acknowledging, and merely witnessing whatever presents itself to your Awareness, you gain a cosmic perspective about the current circumstances in which you find yourself. This alone has the almost magical power to lift you out of the cyclical hamster wheel of emotional turmoil. Furthermore, it gives you the wherewithal to respond rather than react to your circumstances, grounded from a place of practiced presence, one of deep and loving compassion. Once you know who you are, you start to align your life in the direction that befits such a noble and divine being. 

Another way that Yoga Nidra has the power to heal is that once you align with your True Nature, that of Awareness itself, you lean into that part of you that is already whole, complete, and healed. You know how you start to act like the folks you hang around with? Well the more you are in the presence of wholeness, it’s incredible how you simply stop entertaining all those parts of you that don’t serve your highest being. With a regular exposure, to wholeness you start to align to your own most natural way of being, your Source Nature, and feel yourself healing in body, mind, and spirit.

Here’s the thing: yoga, meditation, and Yoga Nidra don’t give you anything you don’t already have. They simply take off some of the conditioning, the layers, or forgetfulness we have around our already perfect self. 

Well, can Yoga Nidra cure acute, chronic, or even terminal diseases and conditions? I’ve heard my students tell me how Yoga Nidra has helped them cure everything including: sexual dysfunction, insomnia, heart disease, high blood pressure, depression and anxiety, substance abuse/dependency, stage fright, trauma, and serious emotional abuse. Moreover, what Yoga Nidra helps you to heal is the fundamental human malady which is feeling separate from Source. When you know that you are fundamentally whole, despite any finite condition you may have in body, mind, and spirit, you live your life richly and fully knowing that each thing that presents itself to you is an opportunity to lean into witnessing, into presence, into experiencing yourself as Awareness. So yes, Yoga Nidra can help you heal in the traditional way of healing and it can also help you experience a level of wholeness that extends beyond what any regular physician would deem as whole. 

And at the end of the day, one of the superpowers of Yoga Nidra is that it offers you concentrated rest. They say that 30 minutes of Yoga Nidra is the equivalent in rest as a solid 2-hour nap. The entire mode of Yoga Nidra is to use relaxation to enter into the “Nidra” state of mind, which is like a daydream state. This state acts as a special pocket of consciousness wherein you can gain incredible insight, rest, and healing. Rest is the first order of operations for any kind of healing in body, mind, and spirit. Just by the fact that Yoga Nidra is restful in nature, it helps facilitate healing. If you or someone you know is convalescing due to any circumstance, try doing some Yoga Nidra. At very least you will get a solid bout of conscious rest. I can assure you that you’ll feel better when you’re done. Doing this regularly will be like adding currency to your wellness bank account. 

Once, I was asked to give private yoga lessons to a man who was working with stage 4 colon cancer. On our first session together, I told him that while what we do may or may not help to cure his cancer, our goal was to become as healthy as possible given whatever circumstances and allow the process of healing to unfold as it does. We did very gentle poses, some breath work, and a LOT of Yoga Nidra. Together we had some transcendent experiences, some of the richest and most enlightening experiences of my life. I remember seeing my client-turned-life-long-friend emerge from some of these practices, wide-eyed, and crazy looking and almost shouting, “What was that! It was incredible!” My friend eventually succumbed to cancer but he soaked as much life and vitality as possible with the remaining years we had practicing yoga together. I believe that despite the fact that he eventually died, he experienced a level of wholeness that many people only dream about.

Experience this practice for yourself and enjoy the healing that comes through Yoga Nidra.

What's Alive In Me

Photo by Alex Adams

How are you? I hope you are well and grounded and connected to your heart. I wanted to let you know about my incredible live, online Yoga Nidra training I have planned for this weekend but I'd be remiss if I didn't share what's truly alive in me first…

What's alive in me today is some recent news about serious health issues concerning a member of my family. Without going into details to protect privacy, I'm optimistic for a good outcome while also being realistic about the hard work ahead. We have a family motto: "We are a family who can do hard things!"

What's also really alive in me today is our desperate need for social revolution in this country for our BIPOC (black, indigenous people of color) and LGBTQ+ brothers and sisters. Specifically, I know that the work starts with me and that I need to listen and learn. For me, this social crisis marks a new practice of drawing inward to a journey of greater self-discovery, one that will help me to do my part to heal what's broken in myself, to recognize inequality that is embedded unconsciously within me so I can learn to love it, respond to heal it, and act to do my part to heal our country and world.

Like I mentioned in my email/blog post last week, The reLoveution Starts Within, hating on or discriminating someone else, even unconsciously, is some backward way of finding wholeness. It's the autoimmunity of humanity. There's no way to get to where we are going unless we heal the fundamental illusion of separateness.

I get totally overwhelmed facing the teeth of such a big and snarling issue. It's easy to go all deer-in-the-headlights and simply freeze. I know that if it weren't an important issue, I wouldn't be afraid of it. I suppose it's the difficult but necessary growth that I must take which I fear. But this is me making that first step, resolving not to quit until we all get there.

Nonetheless, I'm hopeful. I believe that time is an illusion, that we've all already made it to perfection, that we are all already enlightened and this human experience is like rewinding the tape to see how it all happened. What is happening now is some big and necessary growing pains but that we are doing it! This doesn't spare us from the really hard work ahead of us, just that we are assured success for the inevitable difficulty. We are on this journey together so let's hold hands, brush ourselves off when we fall, and keep moving forward!

We are waking up!

To my BIPOC (black, indigenous, people of color) as well as queer brothers and sisters, I'm listening. I want to understand. I want to do the right thing, even if I'm kinda clueless. I may not say the right things or fully know exactly how clueless I am, but I'm willing to learn. My heart is open. I'm humbled by the importance of this issue and I'm willing to do what I need to do to heal my own issues. I'm reading, meditating, writing, and acting toward the healing of this issue.

I invite you to do likewise.

---

Yoga Nidra Training

Yoga Nidra: Follow Your Heart

To lead up to my live, online Yoga Nidra training I’ll be hosting June 12–14th I’ve been on a kick lately, writing about the fact that we have a heart’s gift for the world. For some of us, our heart’s gift to the world is rockin’ out like Prince, others of us choose the arena of raising kids in which to rock. We all have special talents in this world and the way we love the world is the way we give back to it. But what do you do if you’re not quite sure about what your heart’s gift for the world is or if you do know, how to share it with the world? One sure way to discover the answer to either of those questions is to follow your heart.

Follow Your Heart

Photo of Acoustic Music SLC

A while ago I wrote something called Unique Tunings for Guitars. It’s about how a guitar string is tuned to ring at a certain frequency when plucked. But if I’m playing, say, an A on my sax, all the way on the other side of the room from the guitar hanging on the wall, the A string which is tuned to ring at the same frequency, will hear its song sung by my sax and spontaneously begin to sing along, even though nobody touched the guitar. Often, I’ll pull my sax outta my mouth and hear the guitar humming happily in the corner all by itself, like there’s a ghost in the room who just couldn’t help herself from playing along to my sultry sax playin’. I know, crazy.

Well, I believe our hearts strings are tuned in a similar way—tuned so that they sing when they hear their song. Perhaps the best way to approximate what Source is—Source is what I’m calling that thing we all come from, where we go when we die, and exists within everything in the Universe—the best way to approximate what that thing is would be to call it love. So, when you love something or someone and you feel your heart strings a hummin’, well, that’s Source hearing it’s song. To find out what Source has in mind for you in this life, what your heart’s gift for the world is, just notice what you love.

What resonates with you, what do you love? Even if you don’t know what your heart’s gift for the world is—your purpose for life— loving the world IS your purpose.

Period.

Focus on what you love and prioritize your attention on those things. Do you love ceramics? Do you love to ski? Do you love to teach? If it feels like the only thing in the world you love is your cat, then maybe your heart’s gift for the world is to love that cat for all you’re worth. Lucky cat. Give up the notion that you gotta be Gandhi or Lady Gaga to bless the world. Someone’s already been assigned that job. You’ve got your own job and it has something to do with what makes your heart sing. That’s it. It can be that simple.

Can Your Heart’s Gift To The World Change?

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Keep in mind, though, that everything in this Universe is in some sort of orbit and subject to change, even your heart’s gift for the world, so don’t get too attached. Be connected enough to Source, to the love that is within you, to know when you might be called to love in a different direction.

Whether you know your heart’s gift for the world or not, it often takes gobs of quiet, heaps of introspection, and about a metric shit-ton of courage to learn to know it and/or organize your life in order to share it with the world.

Maybe discovering what your heart’s gift for the world is takes being a little more familiar with Source. If you and Source aren't really on a first-name basis, you might want to try some meditation. But sitting down, lighting some incense, and closing your eyes, while trying to focus despite the scratchy licks from the textured tongue of your beloved cat, may not instantly open up that deep wisdom you seek from your heart. Sometimes, to hear those secrets from your heart, you gotta set the conditions right to “listen.” Sometimes this means starting with some movement, some breath work, some gratitude, and then do your meditation. Even still, the message might not come right away but as you regularly draw inward, slowly, you’ll learn to hear the quiet but sure voice of your heart. As you do, it will undoubtedly tell you what your heart’s gift for the world is and how to share it. I promise.

Please enjoy this optimization practice and Yoga Nidra practice I lead during one of my live online Yoga Nidra classes. It consists of a pranayama (breath work) practice, a mindfulness exercise (with gratitude), a few gentle poses, and a nice long and expansive Yoga Nidra practice. Enjoy!

Yoga Nidra: How Opposites Reveal Oneness

I’ve been teaching Yoga Nidra since 2008. While I initially took Dr. Richard Millers iRest Yoga Nidra training and have the deepest respect for that method, I do not teach that method. Instead, I’ve learned volumes about the fascinating and spiritually illuminating subject of Yoga Nidra by simply doing the practice and studying many teachers. I have since developed my own Yoga Nidra training and Yoga Nidra scripts which I feel gives teachers the power of understanding Yoga Nidra’s “what” and “why” so that they can deliver the practice in their own voice based on certain essential principles derived from their own experience.

My teaching style is based on using the koshas to explore the ego as a tool to illuminate the other half of your being, your Awareness. I encourage students to welcome anything and everything that arises into their Awareness, to acknowledge it for what it is with as much objectivity as possible, and learn to merely observe it. Doing so opens practitioners to the magical opportunity of responding rather than reacting to stimuli, not only in the practice of Yoga Nidra but more usefully in the practice of life. After all, Krishnamurti said that “The highest form of intelligence is the ability to observe without evaluating.”

I teach that what we seek to accomplish in Yoga Nidra is to wake up to our True Nature, one that is not bound by the limits of the ego nor is that of pure consciousness, but rather what I call the Both And Nature which is the beautiful express of consciousness meets form.

One of the tools I use regularly to arrive at the beautiful experience is using opposites during a Yoga Nidra practice.

We use the practice of exploring a binary and then attempt to hold the opposites in our Awareness in order to pop out of ego consciousness, limited to experiencing the world as this or that, and instead experience ourselves as Awareness itself. Ego exists only in a realm of this or that. Awareness is the Singularity, the place where everything exists as part of the larger whole. There are no opposites in Awareness, it's non-binary. Holding opposites together in your Awareness is a simple and useful tool to help you experience yourself as Awareness itself. Eventually, this will then lead you to experiencing your life in your Both And Nature, the marriage of the ego and Awareness.

After establishing the feeling of being Awareness itself, perhaps arrived at by holding opposites like the sound of my voice and the feeling in your heart, you then reinforce and deepen this feeling throughout your Yoga Nidra practice as you go move further into your layered Awareness by exploring the koshas. Remember that whatever you are aware of reveals Awareness itself. You can use opposites to illuminate Awareness in the realms of body (anamayakosha), for example, by first bringing attention one's to right hand, then left, then holding right and left simultaneously in Awareness. You can do this in other koshas too by holding opposite emotions or thoughts or beliefs. 

I tend to start a Yoga Nidra practice with an opposites exercise because it's great to begin the practice with a felt sense of Awareness, even if it's mild or somewhat contrived, rather than arriving at it in the middle or end of practice. I believe it works best to do this because we experience deepening awareness in layers rather than in a linear fashion. In other words, start by inviting the practitioners to feel themselves as Awareness right off the bat, perhaps with an opposites exercise, then continue doing it here and there

throughout the practice and in each koshas. (Remember that you don't have to do it through every koshas. Each kosha is just one way to anchor your Awareness.) Each time you invite the practitioner to experience themselves as Awareness, perhaps by doing the opposites exercise, it deepens the practitioner's Awareness. They will therefore experience the practice from that point forward with increasingly deeper Awareness. Even if you were to repeat a body scan a few times in a row, each time you go through it, provided they were reminded of being Awareness iteslf, they would experience it differently because of the layered nature of Awareness. 

Again, you're not trying to divorce the ego and seek to experience yourself as only Awareness. Rather, you're using the ego to illuminate that which you would otherwise not know about yourself, the Awareness part of you, the part that always is and never changes. Ultimately as you come to know both ego and Awareness intimately, you give birth to a third thing, what I call the Both And Nature, the marriage of Awareness and form. 

To continue explaining it, the ego exists in a binary, a state that sees things as this or that, me or you, have or have not. We naturally tend to identify as the ego because we define our reality by what we can see, taste, feel, etc. What's more is that it's our natural psychology makes us differentiate ourselves from other objects from an early age. Why would we know anything other than the ego? Well, we come from the place that is beyond ego, Source, and no matter how much of a seeker you are or how "spiritually minded" you want to be, we are all constantly reach to come back to our Origin, Source, home, be that consciously or unconsciously. We search every discipline imaginable to tell us what it means to be. 

The Awareness part of us has no form, cannot be seen, felt, etc. This is tricky because typically we have heretofore defined everything we know as "real" based on the criteria of the ego, that which we can feel, see, taste, etc. So how can we possibly come to know ourselves as Awareness and not just the ego?

The ego is the perfect and balanced opposite of Awareness. The ego cannot exist in a vacuum any more than Awareness can. We don't transcend the ego to understand ourselves only as Awareness. In fact, the ego is our greatest tool that illuminates our Awareness and the experience of the marriage of the two gives us our True Nature, our Both And Nature. I like the analogy of a marriage, consciousness marries form and the love child between the two is YOU, a spiritual being born of Awareness and form. You are the Divine, up-leveling itself to wake up know itself more intimately. You are giving birth to yourself as you practice presence. 

But arriving at experiencing yourself as this holy marriage takes a practice. We must learn how to not identify only as ego but rather as this third thing. But since ego is what we are most familiar with, what we pay most of our attention to, it actually serves as perhaps the best way to illuminate that which lies beyond the ego. 

In Yoga Nidra we can practice experiencing our Both And Nature by first establishing a binary to bring opposites into our field of attention, opposites like inside/outside, me/you, body/sound. Doing so leans into the practiced attention to ego and refines your focus and attention on one thing and then the another. Then, as you try holding them together, simultaneously in your Awareness, your ego freaks out and experiences cognitive dissonance because it only knows a world of this or that and never the twain shall meet, at least according the the ego. While these two things seem like complete opposites, they share something so obviously in common that it's as easy to miss as the nose on your face. What these two apparent opposites have in common is that you are aware of them. What you're aware of reveals Awareness itself. When you hold opposites simultaneously in your Awareness, your consciousness is forced to leave the realm of the binary to experience that which exists in the grand Singularity, Awareness itself. 

Learning to regularly experience the Awareness part of your being through practices such as Yoga Nidra, forever alters your self-concept. You no longer feel yourself as only ego. Instead you begin to feel your Both And Nature, the beautiful marriage that joins finite and infinite, body and spirit, form and consciousness. Living life in your Both And Nature doesn't make you blind to the ego, the natural textures, emotions, and vicissitudes of life. Quite the opposite. Living life from your Both And Nature helps you to begin to see every molecule in the world as an opportunity to practice presence, Awareness. The entire world, with its flavors, textures emotions, and even challenges, exists as a testament to your own Beingness. Every sunrise, every rainy afternoon, every breakup is somehow a love letter from the Universe, form whispering to consciousness, "Wake up! Watch this! I've made it just for you!"

Truly anything that helps you to be present has the capacity to do this for you but Yoga Nidra is a great and easy way of doing it. Powerful and effective. Plus relaxing. The opposites exercise is just one mechanism to help practice.

This reminds me of the Sermon of the Flower, origin of Zen Budhism where the Buddha gathers his disciples and without a word holds up a single flower. Most are mute with confusion by this gesture but Mahakasyapa smiles with understanding. He understands that this flower has the same beingness as everything else in the Universe. Words cannot explain this knowing. Mahakasypa experiences the marriage of form and consciousness. He hears what every object in the universe is whispering, including this humble flower is whispering the truth, that every thing exists in the marriage of form and being. 

Loving The 4-Train: Compassion, Being, and Loving Yourself

You Don’t Need to Change

You don't need to change. You don't need to improve anything. Just love the world and love yourself as a beautiful part of the world.

Mary Oliver opens her exquisite poem, Wild Geese, with these words:

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

(Read full poem)

Fundamentally, you are perfect just the way you are. That might sound trite. It might sound tired. Nonetheless, it’s truly the greatest message I could ever offer. That and I love you. It’s true. I may not even know you very well. We may have never met. But you’re a human being with dreams and emotions and hopes and dammit, we are all here working out our existence the best we can, struggling and loving and learning to wake up to the power of our own existence. There’s something very beautiful about that. That beauty exists within me and it exists within you.

Loving yourself is to love the Universe

Now with over 100 pages in Yoga Nidra scripts!

To learn to love the world you gotta first learn to love yourself. The world—the entire Universe— is a projection of YOU. What exists outside of you also exists inside of you therefore, the best way to learn to love everything is to love yourself. You know, “be the change” and all that? Well what that means is that everything in the Universe comes from Source including you so by effecting yourself you effect everything else. Loving yourself is to love the Universe.

There’s a great irony in loving things just as they are because as you allow yourself to simply be just as you are, devoid of the shoulds and the what-ifs, it actually gives you freedom to recognize exactly the ways in which you are programmed to grow.

It goes back to something I’ve often said which is:

In order to get there you have to be here and here is always changing.

Truly we exist as the love child of the Universe: that which is pure spirit, which just is, which needs nothing to exist and that which is finite, imbued with form, subject to change and death. There is only now. There is only HERE. But “here” is a treadmill at our feet.

The entire Universe is involved in some dance between presence and movement and I suppose we need to simply join the dance. Get dressed up and fu@#ing join the dance!

Holding Space

We practice deep compassion as we extend this same privilege to other people and things around us and allow them also to simply be, especially those things that would easily turn our hearts bitter.

As we practice yoga and meditation, we cultivate and practice understanding our own being. Doing so helps to reduce the suffering known in the ancient Sanskrit wisdom traditions as Dukkha, that suffering which holds us back from experiencing our highest self.

One enormous act of compassion is holding space by being with a person or thing and allowing them to be just as they or it is. I'm thinking of a friend who is sick or experiencing something mentally or spiritually challenging or (heaven forbid), holds a different political view or opinion about what’s going on with COVID. Simply being with that person (6-ft. apart of course) and holding space for them, without the need to fix or change anything, just being with them, allows a deep compassion to exist between the two of you. Perhaps one of the greatest acts of love is to truly see a person and allow them to simply be how they are. To love them as is.

Practice making room in your heart for that which would sooner canker your heart toward someone or something or make your mind fester with shoulds and what-ifs. Holding space for someone or something, doesn’t mean you have to invite them over for dinner or send them a card on their birthday. Rather you simply offer compassion toward them (or it) by not becoming sour. Sometimes that means practicing not having an opinion about it (read: Lionel Richie is my Guru). And by so doing, you ultimately offer your own heart and mind in the same compassion—the heart that flourishes when it feels abundance and love, not bitterness, and the mind that abounds when it is sheltered from should and what-ifs.

Here is a simple example of holding space:

World: The NYC 4 Train once stopped en route ultimately causing me to miss my flight home.

Me: Bought a NYC 4 Train T-Shirt as an act of holding space for the 4 Train.

World: Just as it is.

Me: Loving the world as it is.

This week, I invite you to practice holding space for things that you either don't understand or which bother you. May this be our daily practice. May love for yourself and the world be our eternal practice.

Please share this!

Yoga Nidra: Emotions, Thoughts, and Beliefs

Yoga Nidra: Waking From The Dream

Yoga Nidra is a fascinating process of coming to know Self through the relaxing and mindful process of layered Awareness. Essentially, Yoga Nidra acts much like a guided meditation where the practitioner lies down, closes their eyes, and listens to the facilitator lead them through layers of Awareness, such as being aware of sensation, thoughts, emotions, etc. This has the effect of learning to observe all the changeable aspects of what we typically identify as, your ego elements like body, thoughts, emotions, etc., as the illuminating tools to help you practice experiencing your True Nature, that of Awareness itself. When rooted in this ground of your being, you continue to live this human life, but with greater perspective. You still are very aware of body, emotions, thoughts, etc, but Yoga Nidra helps to give you the perspective of what they are. Truly these elements are mere tools to help illuminate what I call your Both And Nature, the part of you that is BOTH pure consciousness (perusha) and form (pracriti), that is both that which is infinite and finite. Coming into this Both And Nature is another way of expressing the end goal of yoga as stated in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, to arrive at the place of grand Singularity, that of complete Oneness.

So this yogic Oneness is the goal and Nidra is the method. Nidra refers to that in between state, somewhere between waking and dreaming. Nidra is achieved through relaxed awareness and is the secret door that opens you to experience your True Nature. It’s as simple as listening and relaxing. In truth, what seems like sleep is actually helping us wake up to our True Nature. It sometimes takes a relaxing of the rigid confines of our rational thinking, perhaps the most pervasive and strong element of our ego, to realize that we are more than our ego.

What you listen to in a Yoga Nidra practice is all the things that filter into your Awareness. Mostly these are the elements of the ego. Understanding them as tools to illuminate our Awareness. This helps us to see things such as thoughts, beliefs, and emotions for what they are—parts of us that cannot define who we are but which point to our Divine essence. Though we may have thoughts, beliefs, and emotions, we are not thoughts, beliefs, and emotions. They are mere tools, games to play in the beautiful mortal experience, as we wake up to our Divine essence through this textured and beautiful thing called being human.

Don't Think Everything You Believe: Moving Past the Rational Mind and Understanding Thoughts, Emotions, and Beliefs

Thoughts, emotions, and beliefs are powerful elements in our lives. For many, they seem to rule our lives. Yoga Nidra is a powerful tool to understand our thoughts, emotions, and beliefs for what they are and begin to see them with a proper perspective.

Yoga Nidra is a Tantric practice. Tantra refers to a school of thought that says everything is part of a non-dualist great whole. In Tantra, the idea is that anything that suggests we are separate from anything else, is an illusion. Yoga Nidra explores perhaps our 5 greatest layers of the ego called the maya (illusion) kosha (sheath or body) By understanding our maya koshas, we can learn to not identify with the changeable parts of our beings but rather to use them as a way of exposing our True Self, Awareness.

The Pranayamaya deals in part with energy and emotions, the Manomaya kosha with mind thoughts and how thought leads to emotion, and the Vijnanamaya kosha, beliefs, dreams, the collective unconscious and even our own deep wisdom. Just like everything else in the maya kosha realms, our thoughts, emotions, and even beliefs change. To think of them as reality is a misidentification away from your True Nature, Awareness.By understanding your thoughts, emotions, and beliefs for what they are, you dismantle their control over you. Instead you begin to identify with Awareness that experiences emotions, thought, or belief, for example, without confounding your identity as that emotion, thought, or belief.

Like everything, learning to use an emotion as a method of experiencing your True Self may seem like a tall order. Of course it may take practice to be aligned with Awareness enough to become objective about harsh thoughts or emotions but hey, that's what we are practicing by taking this course, right?

The Realm of the Mind: Manomaya Kosha

Things like anxiety, fear, or heartbreak, can't co-exist while you are relaxed. That's big! It is one reason why we emphasize relaxation so often as we begin the Yoga Nidra process. When relaxed, you may then observe any emotion arise and see it for what it is: an interesting part of you that changes and that ultimately may help you grow greater Awareness. Not Truth, not who you are.

Practicing switching between perceived opposite emotions is a skillful way of stimulating your brain and allowing you to witness and be with, rather than react to, certain emotional states. Remember that sometimes this takes practice but can be very effective even from the first practice of doing this.

In the late 1950's, Joseph Wolpe added to Pavlov's work by developing a treatment for anxiety using counter-conditioning. He stated that anxiety symptoms were lessened or eliminated when stressors were presented gradually and also systematically and paired with a relaxation response. Relax and then address your emotion to see it with the right perspective. Remember you are Awareness that experiences emotion, not emotion itself. Yoga Nidra can help some practitioners deal with some of the things that give them stress and even trauma because Yoga Nidra helps you to be relaxed enough to observe all kinds of benign objects, like the sensation of your hands for example, as a way of learning to also witness things like stress and emotions with the same kind of objectivity. When practiced regularly, it weakens your stress response and instead you can merely observe something that otherwise would stress you out.

Habituation is when you bring attention to something that is persistent and in so doing the stimulation eventually loses its power to cause a reaction. It's like sleeping through white noise. Once your mind has heard the noise, can acknowledge it, it can stop becoming agitated by it and simply move on. It can relax. The sound (or other stimulation, read pain or emotions) may still exist, but they don't have the same power over your mind.

The Only Way To Get There Is To Be Here: Emotions and Beliefs

Failure to acknowledge where you are in life ironically keeps you locked in that place like a prisoner. Don't deny the emotion, for example. Rather, Yoga Nidra helps us to face whatever comes up for you and practice witnessing it. Therefore emotions will often lose their power to control your life.

Some cool things about the layer of beliefs, symbol, and dreams, the Vignanamaya kosha:

It lies beneath our rational mind. P.S. "rational" isn't Reality (with a capital R)--it's just the best way our brains seem to create an order in an otherwise chaotic world the best it can.

A compounded thought turns into a belief. Think it long enough and you actually believe it. Like everything else in this Universe, beliefs are neither True or not true. They are just beliefs. They come and go.

Archetypes are a fascinating way of examining the Vijnanamaya Kosha. When I think of a wise person, I think of Gandalf, the wizard from Lord of the Rings. He is my archetype I hold for my inner-wisdom. If I were to summon that wise person inside of me, the one that knows the answers and can tell me where to go, I'd think of Gandalf and see what he says. I know that Gandalf is really just the deep wisdom part of me.

Remember that what comes up when we examine our dreams, symbols, and archetypes, lies beneath our rational mind and therefore doesn't always make sense, nor does it need to. Just have fun with it and see if it speaks to you. If not, think of it as an interesting way to practice paying attention and move on. It's like examining your dreams for symbols that might represent something happening in the conscious realm. Just have fun with it.

As always, our primary objective with Yoga Nidra is to cultivate and identify as Awareness. Allow everything that presents itself as you welcome, recognize, and witness it, as a tool to practice Awareness.

Learning to Fail

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

Photo by Alex Adams

Freaked to Fail

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

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

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

One of My Favorite Failures

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

My Yoga Nidra Teacher Teaching Taught Me to Fail

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

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

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

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

What are the failures you’re grateful for?

Online Yoga Nidra Training: Now's The Time

Online Yoga Nidra Training

I hope you are safe and not bored to insanity given this global pandemic.

Perhaps now is the time to finally learn how to become an incredible Yoga Nidra teacher. Yoga Nidra is the process of understanding the beautiful innate wholeness that is inside of you that IS you in a way that also promotes deep relaxation, calm, and nourishing rest. It’s truly like napping your way to enlightenment!

Plus, the world needs Yoga Nidra now more than ever to help us all be at our best during these crazy unstable times.

I’ve developed an online Yoga Nidra training that prepares you to understand not only how to lead effective and powerful Yoga Nidra experiences for yourself and others, but also teaches you the fundamental principles of the practice so that you can learn to customize the experience to meet the needs of whomever you’re teaching.

While you’re learning to develop your own voice, I’ve included a PDF booklet of over 100 pages of great Yoga Nidra scripts.

My training is the audio and audio/video recordings of a live training so you will have the benefit of hearing many of the same questions and comments from other participants. You are always welcome to send me questions and comments along the way.

This training is an instant download and you can accomplish it on your own timeline. You can start teaching Yoga Nidra right away with the scripts as you’re learning how to develop your own scripts.

With This Training You Can Offer Online Yoga Nidra Classes

This training will pay for itself in no time! Personally, while I’m quarantined at home I’m earning more than $400 USD a week offering Yoga Nidra classes virtually via Zoom. Plus, I’m going to be offering a “how to” workshop about offering virtual classes very soon.

Training Costs Only $345

I know that the Wellness Industry has been hit hard with this pandemic. My sincere desire is that you learn how to lead this practice effectively so you can begin to work with your own clients and students and share this incredible practice in a way that also supports you spiritually, emotionally, and even financially during these crazy times. I am also offering to split the payments into three monthly payments if that would help you to make this investment. That and I stand by my work so if you don’t love it, I also offer a no-questions money-back guarantee.

“I just wanted to mail to say that I completed the training at the end of last week - wow, just wow, I really enjoyed each element of the training (especially the talk between everyone about their own experiences). The training was a very timely purchase and study time during this weird time we find ourselves in....it’s definitely helped me in staying aligned and in the vibration I need right now.”

— Bev R.

“I just completed your on-line Yoga Nidra TT. It was truly a wonderful, enlightening experience. Very grateful to have had the opportunity.”

— Chrissy W.

This 20-hour Yoga Nidra intensive is designed to deepen your knowledge of Self through Yoga Nidra as you learn to guide yourself and others through effective and varied Yoga Nidra practices. It is perfect both for teachers interested in teaching Yoga Nidra as well as students who simply want to deepen their practice of Yoga Nidra.

This intensive will be available through audio/video recordings and through a manual in the form of a PDF.

What’s in this course:

• A library of Yoga Nidra training that you can access whenever you’d like

• A deeper understanding of Self through Yoga Nidra

• A course of profound relaxation

• A full audio/video recording of the training for practice and continued learning

• Over a hundred pages of Yoga Nidra scripts to use

• Yoga Immersion PDF workbook (60+ pages)

• A certificate of completion

• Yoga Alliance Continuing Education Credit (if needed). This counts as 20 hours of non-contact hours.

Some of the topics we will cover:

• Philosophy of Yoga Nidra

• Myths and Chants

• Yoga Nidra for Healing/Trauma/Stress

• Yoga Nidra for Performance

• The Power of Visualizations

• Subtle Body Study and Practice

• The Koshas: Our Greatest Tools for Awareness

• Supportive Pranayama and Mindfulness Techniques (which you can print and give to your students)

• Incorporating Yoga Nidra into Yoga

• Effective Teaching Methods

• Role as Teacher

• Self Practice

• Group Teaching

• One-on-one Teaching

By the end of this immersion you will be ready to teach Yoga Nidra!

The scripts included with the purchase of this training are as follows:

• 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

only $345!

Quraran-Town, Unique Opportunities, and The Strangest Cocktail Ever

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Here we are at yet another week of living in Quaran-town (I wish I came up with that, thanks Tara T. for that one).

I hope that you’re able to keep your spirits high. Let me remind you that we gotta dig deep in these crazy times. Our attitude about this is going to shape the outcome dramatically, both for ourselves and the world.

This morning I’m extremely grateful for:

• Morning coffee date with Seneca, my wife, co-parent, and partner-in-crime

• Another beautiful spring morning

• YOU, for opening and reading. I really appreciate your presence with me on this journey of life

More about item 3

This weird time in our history has certainly created some “unusual opportunities,” as my friend Chris S. has said. People are out of work, plans and progress are on hold, and there’s a lot of enduring fear around simply staying safe. Oh, and there’s boredom. It’s like the weirdest cocktail ever. Here’s how the recipe would read:

---

The Corona Cocktail

Ingredients:

• 1 oz fear

• 2 oz liquid courage

• 2 oz whole-lotta-love

• 1 oz “Cancelled Plans” bitters

• 1 Tbsp lonely lemon juice

• Lemon wedge

• 3 oz Boredom Tonic, served flat, of course

• ½ tsp Isopropyl Alcohol

• 1 oz aloe vera

• Pinch of spring blossoms

• Margarita salt

• 2 surgical gloves

• N-95 surgical mask

• 6 ft. straw

• Thermometer

• Square of toilet paper

Instructions:

• While wearing the surgical gloves and mask, prepare a margarita glass by first rubbing it with the Isopropyl alcohol.

• Allow glass to dry completely then wet the rim with some of the aloe vera before dipping the rim of the class in the margarita salt giving the drink its “corona.”

• Place the liquid ingredients including the rest of the aloe vera (but NOT the Isopropyl alcohol) into a martini shaker and shake vigorously, either by hand or with the help of an EARTHQUAKE (Salt Lake City had an earthquake 3 weeks ago), for an indeterminate amount of time until the CDC says it’s ok to stop.

• Pour into glass.

• Using the thermometer, ensure that the liquid is below 98.6 degrees before continuing contact with the drink.

• Practice social distancing from your glass by using a 6-ft straw inserted into a small hole made in the front of your mask.

• Garnish with the pinch of spring blossoms, lemon wedge and serve on a square of toilet paper.

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But rather than digressing into day-drinking, let me offer this…

As you know, I make my living by writing, teaching yoga, hosting in-person and online yoga and meditation trainings and retreats. I feel very fortunate to have made a living doing what I love to do for almost 20 years. Yet, these times have presented me with an “unusual opportunity” to give back and offer more resources for free, by donation, or at a reduced price because we all need these valuable resources that help us practice being our best selves during these uncertain times. That and I think yoga, meditation, and some thought-provoking writing present a helluva better solution to our situation than day-drinking.

That’s why I am offering things like my free Tranquility Tool Kit that includes: 2 downloadable yoga videos, 2 Yoga Nidra practices, links to heart-lifting music from myself and friends, as well as some excerpts of my writing to help remind us of our own humanity. I’m also inviting many of my online classes to be by donation so that if you need a yoga class but times are tough financially, you can simply offer good vibes or pay it forward to someone else in some other fashion.

One of my most important missions in life is to offer ways for people to practice being their best selves through yoga and meditation. I am so fortunate to get to make my living doing this, but now I want to give back to YOU who have given me so much through attending classes, downloading my courses online, buying my book, attending my retreats, and simply opening and reading my emails. It means so much, I can’t even tell you.

Here’s the beautiful irony, as much as I try to give back, I am gifted with an increase of generosity comin’ back my way. What an incredible gift! I can’t tell you how immensely grateful I am, thank you, thank you, thank you! It is not only humbling, but reminds me that this bitter cocktail is softening our hearts and helping us to love each other. What humbles me is how despite social distancing, this Coronavirus is helping us to reach out and love each other in creative ways with support, encouragement, creativity, laughs, and resources.

I LOVE YOU! I feel your love back to me.

Thank you.

“Love you more.”

“No, I love YOU more.”

“No, I love YOU, even more”

“Impossible. Can’t love anyone as much as I love you.”

In the spirit of offering yet more love…

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Gratitude

One of the best practices we can do right now during these crazy times is to practice regular gratitude. Gratitude is an easy antidote to so many limiting states of mind including, selfishness, fear, and discontent. Gratitude is a wonderful practice that brings us into the present moment and I believe that the secrets of the Universe (including how to beat Coronavirus) can be accessed through simple and regular presence.

Around Thanksgiving time, I offered for the first time a free 14-day gratitude challenge and I’d like to offer it again.

To do the Gratitude Challenge all you do is every day, wake up and write down three things you’re grateful for. Then, choose one of those things and turn it into a small paragraph. You can also share one or all of the things you are grateful for with someone else. Simple. In fact, at the beginning of this email, I followed the exact format for the Gratitude Challenge.

The last time I did this, there were so many people who completed the challenge and wrote to tell me what a magical practice it was for them and how much they enjoyed it. In fact, about two weeks ago, I got an email from a student and friend of mine in NYC who took the gratitude challenge and loved it so much she never stopped. She emailed me to say that she was on day 124

So, I’m offering another gratitude challenge. It starts whenever you register. How about now?

The challenge is simple but will leave you feeling great during these uncertain times. Continued exposure to gratitude will begin to change your character. Plus, gratitude is even more contagious than Coronavirus. There’s really no cure for it but more gratitude.

Registration is free and will give you access to receive supportive emails from me every day of the challenge.

Register today and pass this challenge along to your nearest and dearest. Share the love and make gratitude contagious.

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Yoga Nidra: Let Go and Be

Yoga Nidra is often called the “yoga of sleep,” however Yoga Nidra is more about waking up, wakening up to your ultimate Being. In my online Yoga Nidra classes and my online Yoga Nidra trainings, I discuss how the ancient yoga principles found in the Yoga Sutras help us find a practice of waking up.

According to the Yoga Sutras, the natural challenges in life provide us with refinement or Tapas, translated as the heat necessary for our transformation into our highest beings. Tapas is the process of waking up to our True Nature.

This heat inevitably leads us toward Swadhyaya, or self-knowledge. Self knowledge is both knowing how to best handle the Tapas, as well as what the Tapas reveals, which is the infinite Being waking up to know itself in this physical form and in this life. With greater self-knowledge you qualify for deeper tapas, then deeper self-knowledge, etc.

Beyond this cycle of growth and self-knowledge is the the ultimate step called Ishvarapranidhana, which means to lay it down at the feet of God. The ultimate step is to transcend this cycle of refinement and self-knowledge by enabling our ultimate act of free will which is to completely let go of control and submit to things just as they are. To merely be. Doing so up-levels our consciousness and then allows us to move back into the cycle of refinement and self-knowledge with greater understanding about what that process is doing. It’s like rebooting your life where everything is the same and yet your relationship to it is completely different.

Yoga Nidra is a method of relaxing inquiry into Self where through deepening relaxation and layered Awareness, you practice releasing all which doesn't’ serve you to see it for exactly what it is. With this perspective, you no longer identify AS that thing and can allow it to be. Because everything in this Universe has an orbit, you’ll find that as you stop clinging or resisting certain things in your life and allow them to just BE, they find their own expression and move along their orbit.

You have a magnificent capacity to simply BE!

I made up a myth that I want to share with you that will hopefully make these teachings come alive.

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Yoga Nidra Training

Yoga Nidra is the relaxing and mystical journey deep into the inner-realms of consciousness where through a guided meditation, you get to experience your True Nature, something that feels one with all things, infinite, and whole.

Such wholeness leads naturally to profound healing, boundless equanimity, and and understanding of your life, unparalleled by every-day thinking. Stress, trauma, and scarcity seem insignificant after you've experienced the part of you that is infinitely larger than any of these smaller experiences. Truly, through Yoga Nidra you see into the vastness of the Universe that is within you.

Learn this transformative practice for your own soul evolution as well as learning how to lead others through this life-changing practice. This could be the most important work you do in a great long time.

This essential training is designed for those who wish experience the unparalleled magnificence of their True Self through Yoga Nidra, to deepen their knowledge of the practice Yoga Nidra by learning its philosophy, and learn to teach it. It’s a fascinating journey into self that gives you the tools to help others also make this deep, personal journey. This is an engaging, fun, and in-depth look at all things Yoga Nidra.

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Weekly Live Online Yoga Nidra Classes

Now 2 classes weekly: Wednesday 6 pm and Sunday 9 am MST!

All classes are recorded so you can join live or watch later. Each participant receives the recordings to build your Yoga Nidra library.

Buy a pass, 4 classes for $40 or pay a drop-in for $12. If you buy a pass, you will be automatically signed up for both Wednesday and Sunday classes unless you indicate to me that you’d prefer either one or the other.

There is immense power in practicing together. These classes allow you to join from anywhere in the world. And because they are recorded and each of the classes are emailed to you after the class, this allows you to register and watch the session later as well as build your own digital Yoga Nidra library.

Tranquility Tool Kit

Blessings to you! I sincerely hope that you and your family are doing well and coping with the reality and myriad and often strange circumstances that the COVID-19 pandemic is presenting to this world.

My family and I are doing well. This time of quarantine has made us come closer not only proximally, but emotionally as well. The other evening we made a special meal and opened one of our nice bottles of wine that we had been saving for a special occasion. After, we cranked the music and had a dance party. Truly this is love in the time of COVID-19.

I hope that you are able to find a greater love for self and others during this unique time.

I want to remind us all that we CAN do hard things. YOU can do hard things

This is it, my friend. This is the time for all of us to apply all of the lessons we’ve learned from our yoga and meditation practices, as well as our previous life lessons. This is the time to practice doing those things that help us find stillness and hope despite fear, uncertainty, and even illness.

Perhaps, through all of this, we may open up our minds and hearts to see and learn what we may become through this experience, both individually and collectively.

“It’s not about whether you win or lose. It’s about whether or not at the end of the day, you can still stand up and sing.” David Whyte

This is the time to dig deep into our tool kit and use everything we’ve got to keep our spirits high.

Tranquility Tool Kit

I’ve compiled a free tool kit that you can use any time you need to keep your spirits high. Here’s what’s in this tool kit.

Click above to download your FREE digital Tranquility Tool kit

• For stress: Yoga Nidra for Stress recording (34 minutes)

• For sleep: Yoga Nidra for Sleep recording (25 minutes)

• To help you breathe: Stress Free breathing practices

• To relax and connect to your body: Gentle Yoga Practice (60 minutes)

• To move, strengthen, and erase stress from your body: Moderate/Intermediate Yoga Practice (60 minutes)

• Feel-good music for these times:

  • “Let It Be” by Megan Peters and Scott Moore

  • Link to some incredible musicians’ Facebook and recordings of music

  • Megan Peters

  • John Louviere (find his Cabin Fever Covers on March 22, 2020)

  • Here’s a link to an amazing musician, MNEK, from Britain, who wrote and produced some absolutely STUNNING acapella songs about Coronavirus that are simultaneously hilarious and incredibly soulful.

    • “Bored”

    • “Quarantine”

    • “Selfisolation”

    • “Stay Your Ass Indoors”

• Reading pleasure: Selected posts from my blog

  • Walking Into The Fire

  • Seeing the Finger of God: New Directions in Jazz

  • On The Corner of Justice and Compassion

  • Lionel Richie is My Guru

  • Grand Theft Auto: A Study in Mindfulness

  • Part 1

  • Part 2

• Story Time

  • Here’s a recording of an evening of storytelling. (May not be suitable for children) Very personal stories in front of an intimate group about revelation, rebirth, and why heavy metal matters.
    
    
    

There is no better time than now to employ all the tools in our tool kit This is the time that we’ve been preparing for. It’s time to dive deep into your tool belt and use everything you’ve got.

Blessings! Stay safe. Stay sane.

What To Remember When Waking

Awakening With Yoga Nidra, the “Yoga of Sleep”

I love Yoga Nidra. Yoga Nidra uses the “technology” of the Nidra state, that hypnotic state between waking and dreaming, to enter into an experience of being that isn’t available to us in our regular waking life. Shamanic, religious, and even psychological methods use this state as a way of discovering deeper truths about ourselves. Yoga Nidra is a beautiful and relaxing pathway toward awakening.

I love this poem by David Whyte because like many good poems it can speak to many different things at once. When read from the context of awakening through Yoga Nidra or any other meditative practice, it has a particular poignance.

Enjoy!

What to Remember When Waking

by David Whyte

In that first hardly noticed moment in which you wake,

coming back to this life from the other

more secret, moveable and frighteningly honest world

where everything began,

there is a small opening into the new day

which closes the moment you begin your plans.

What you can plan is too small for you to live.

What you can live wholeheartedly will make plans enough

for the vitality hidden in your sleep.

To be human is to become visible

while carrying what is hidden as a gift to others.

To remember the other world in this world

is to live in your true inheritance.

You are not a troubled guest on this earth,

you are not an accident amidst other accidents

you were invited from another and greater night

than the one from which you have just emerged.

Now, looking through the slanting light of the morning window

toward the mountain presence of everything that can be

what urgency calls you to your one love?

What shape waits in the seed of you

to grow and spread its branches

against a future sky?

Is it waiting in the fertile sea?

In the trees beyond the house?

In the life you can imagine for yourself?

In the open and lovely white page on the writing desk?

from The House of Belonging, Many Rivers Press

Finally, an Online Yoga Nidra Training You Can Do At Home!

More than ever, the world needs you to learn to teach Yoga Nidra.

Maybe now is the perfect time to do a self-guided, home study of Yoga Nidra with my online Yoga Nidra teacher training. Plus, I can think of few practices that would be as absolutely necessary during this crazy time than this relaxing, calming, yet mind-opening mindfulness practice. You can help both yourself and others source their best selves during this precarious time.

This program is available as an instant download so you can began napping your way to enlightenment today! Also, this training comes with my latest PDF book of over 100 pages of Yoga Nidra scripts so that you can begin immediately to help people with practices like Yoga Nidra for Stress, Yoga Nidra for Healing, and Yoga Nidra for Abundance, just to name a few.

This 50-hour Yoga Nidra intensive is designed to deepen your knowledge of Self through Yoga Nidra as you learn to guide yourself and others through effective and varied Yoga Nidra practices. It is perfect both for teachers interested in teaching Yoga Nidra as well as students who simply want to deepen their practice of Yoga Nidra.

I’ll support you every step of the way with quick email responses and/or personal Zoom calls to clarify concepts.

What’s in this Yoga Nidra Training:

• A library of Yoga Nidra training that you can access whenever you’d like

• A deeper understanding of Self through Yoga Nidra

• A course of profound relaxation

• A full audio/video recording of the training for practice and continued learning

• 20 Yoga Nidra scripts to immediately teach effective classes

• Yoga Nidra Immersion PDF workbook

• A certificate of completion

• Yoga Alliance Continuing Education Credit (if needed). This counts as 50 hours of non-contact hours

• Pranayama and mindfulness exercises that support Yoga Nidra practice and which you can print off and give to your students
  

You get a certificate of completion when you’re done and it counts for 20 hours of continuing education with Yoga Alliance (non-contact hours).

Some of the Topics You Will Learn:

• Tantric Philosophy of Yoga Nidra

• Myths and Chants

• Yoga Nidra for Healing/Trauma/Stress

• Neurobiology: Your Brain on Yoga Nidra

• Yoga Nidra for Performance

• The Power of Visualizations

• Subtle Body Study and Practice

• Koshas

• Pranayama

• Incorporating Yoga Nidra into Yoga

• Mindfulness

• Effective Teaching Methods

• Role as Teacher

• Self Practice

• Group Teaching

• One-on-one Teaching (and Dyads)
  

By the end of this immersion you will be ready to teach Yoga Nidra!

Updated with very helpful Yoga Nidra scripts as you are learning to find your own voice.

The Yoga Nidra scripts are as follows.

• 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

You can start to use these scripts immediately to begin to teach effective Yoga Nidra classes while you’re also learning the philosophy and principles of Yoga Nidra so that you can begin to use your own intuition, voice, and experience to affect your students in only the way that you can.

I believe that this time more than ever the world needs Yoga Nidra. it also needs good Yoga Nidra teachers. I believe that if you are reading this that there’s a good chance that you might feel called to do this incredible work.

You get:

• 50 hours of audio and video instruction

• A 60+ page PDF Manual

• Access to a virtual library (dozens) of Yoga Nidra recordings

• Over 100 pages of Yoga Nidra scripts you can start using today

• A certificate of completion

• A beautiful, relaxing, and expansive spiritual journey into Self

all for only $589

Money-back guarantee!

Thank you for your interest in this training. I loved putting it together and I hope you love it as much as I do.

Scott Moore (E-RYT 500, YACEP, RYS) has been teaching yoga since 2003 and Yoga Nidra since 2008. He is the author of Practical Yoga Nidra: A 10-Step Method to Reduce Stress, Improve Sleep, and Restore Spirit. His online Yoga Nidra teacher training has gained global attention and over 30,000 people have enjoyed his Yoga Nidra recordings on the Insight Meditation app. Scott was a professor of an accredited class, Yoga for Wellness, at Westminster College for 9 years and has also created programming and curriculum which incorporates Yoga Nidra for many hospitals and treatment facilities. Scott has also worked with many world-renowned performers and athletes to achieve optimal performance using Yoga Nidra. Scott writes for and has been featured in Yoga Journal, Mantra Magazine, Origin Magazine, Medium, Conscious Life News, Sivana East, and his own blog at scottmooreyoga.com/blog. Scott loves to travel to offer retreats, trainings, and workshops. Scott just moved back to Salt Lake City after living with his wife and son in Southern France.

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There Will Be An Answer, Let It Be

Crazy times, my friend. Crazy times. None of us have any immediate answers to this global health crisis. It’s real and serious. Still, I know that we have the power to beat this on every level. We really do. We are resourceful, creative, and resilient beings. The crisis has ratcheted up our response level to the utmost and this means stepping up to be smart, precautionary, AND compassionate.

While the world’s best and brightest are working hard on figuring out how to fight the actual virus, I believe we all have a different and equally important job: to fight the fear of this virus with a weapon-grade love that has the power to annihilate selfishness, worry, and scarcity. Let’s pull together in these difficult times and fight fear with an increase of love and compassion for each other. By being smart AND compassionate, this thing will level off, and in the end our collective heart will be stronger because of it.

In the Spirit of Social Distancing

If you’re in Salt Lake City, classes at 21st Yoga are being suspended and many are switching to live, virtual classes. Stay tuned for more information on those.

Community is important, especially in these crazy times! Even if you are holed up at home it’s still nice to connect with each other. I’ve been teaching a live, virtual Yoga Nidra class each Sunday at 9 am MST. Join me! This is an excellent way of staying grounded, connecting with others, and also sourcing your highest Self. Each session allows us to talk and interact with each other while also enjoying our own space. Our next session is about responding rather than reacting during times of calamity.

I’m available for private individual and group sessions via Zoom or FaceTime. Please reach out to me to schedule a session if you’re interested. This could actually be a lot of fun and we could turn a crisis into something really cool together.

Lastly, I wanted to share something really special with you…

I heard a story about many Italians who are isolated in their homes because of the pandemic and as a way of connecting to those around them, they are opening their windows and literally singing to each other.

During my meditation practice a few nights ago, the words to “Let It Be” drifted into my mind. After my meditation, I texted my friend, Meg, singer/songwriter extraordinaire and owner of Acoustic Music in Salt Lake City, and asked her if she wouldn’t mind recording it for me to share with you. She was already tucked into bed with the pups and ready to call it a night but when she got my text she became so excited by the idea that she got up, cracked a beer, and recorded it on her phone. One take. I took the track and layered some sweet clarinet behind her sultry voice.

So, from my window to yours, here’s a little music to bring us together in times of trouble. You gotta hear this!

When I find myself in times of trouble

Mother Mary comes to me

Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.

And in my hour of darkness

She is standing right in front of me

Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.

Let it be, let it be.

Whisper words of wisdom, let it be.

And when the broken hearted people

Living in the world agree,

There will be an answer, let it be.

For though they may be parted there is

Still a chance that they will see

There will be an answer, let it be

Let it be, let it be. Yeah

There will be an answer, let it be.

And when the night is cloudy,

There is still a light that shines on me,

Shine on until tomorrow, let it be.

I wake up to the sound of music

Mother Mary comes to me

Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.

Let it be, let it be.

There will be an answer, let it be.

Let it be, let it be,

Whisper words of wisdom, let it be.

Live Online Yoga Nidra Class

Live Virtual Yoga Nidra Class

It’s getting crazy out there with the worries over the COVID-19 and the one sure thing we can do to help change the world is to first change ourselves. Let’s tune into our best selves and allow that to lead us forward into helping ourselves and everyone through these difficult times. Yoga Nidra is perhaps the best way I can think of to change your state in the immediate to affect BEING the change you wish to see in the world. So, if you’re being cautious and would like to both practice public spacing AND experience community, please register for my live, online Yoga Nidra class, every Sunday at 9 am MST.

What Is Yoga Nidra?

Yoga is the practice of arriving to Oneness. Nidra means sleep, or that liminal state between waking and dreaming that acts like a bridge between many seemingly disparate parts of our being. Yoga Nidra employs relaxation as a special tool to not only help you travel that bridge between these different parts of your being into Oneness but also, on a practical level, help you to regularly achieve deep and nourishing rest. They say that 30 minutes of Yoga Nidra is like giving yourself a 2 hour nap! Join me for our next session, Sunday, March 15th at 9 am MST where we practice experiencing ourselves in our True Nature while also becoming very relaxed.

Once you register, you will be able to join me at the appointed time from your computer or smartphone, in the comfort of your own home, where the only virus you have to worry about is whatever computer virus already lurks on your machine. Seriously though, it’s really nice. Plus, you can register even if the time doesn’t work because each person who registered gets a full audio and audio/video recording of the event to review whenever you wish. That and it’s totally affordable.

Click Below to Register and Check Out My Online Training.

Yoga Nidra: The Yoga Of Sleep

Yoga Nidra: The Yoga of Sleep

I’ve been practicing Yoga Nidra since 2005 and have been teaching it since 2008. Yoga Nidra has taught me more about myself and the Universe than perhaps any other practice. It has also personally facilitated some of the most illuminating, spiritual, healing, experiences of my life and has truly shaped me into who I am today. It’s changed my entire world view and has changed the way I approach life, teach yoga, and understand myself and the purpose for existence.

I absolutely love Yoga Nidra! Yoga Nidra is often called the “yoga of sleep.” a very approachable yet effective way of experiencing the Oneness of your being through the process of a relaxing journey through deepening layers of Awareness. Yoga Nidra acts kind of like a guided meditation, where practitioners lie down, close their eyes and listen to a facilitator (teacher) lead to experience themselves as Awareness itself. The fact that Yoga Nidra is so easy to practice and often leaves practitioners feeling rested, illuminated, and calm, makes this a popular, simple, and effective way of exploring one’s higher Self. Yoga Nidra is like napping your way to enlightenment!

Yoga Nidra: Shaping Lives

I have also seen Yoga Nidra transform the lives of countless students, facilitating everything from spiritual growth such as connecting with their Eternal being to tapping in to a wise inner teacher to hear vital personal direction. Students love telling me about how Yoga Nidra has helped them with practical issues like getting better sleep, managing stress, and lowering blood pressure, to name only a few.

I truly believe that Yoga Nidra can change the world by helping people to be the very best and illuminated versions of themselves. Sharing Yoga Nidra is one of my primary missions in life and I’m thrilled to be spreading the news of this transformational practice around the world.

Mayakoshas and Removing the Mask Illusions

Yoga Nidra is but one practice that leads people to experience their highest Selves and to come to the ultimate state of Oneness with all things. The explicit purpose for Yoga Nidra is to layer your attention through the illusions of the ego (the mayakoshas) in order to dis-identify as the ego and instead identify as Awareness itself. These layers of illusion are:

• Anamaya kosha, or animal layer

• Pranamaya kosha or energy layer

• Manomaya kosha or emotions/thoughts layer

• Vijnanamaya kosha or dreaming, unconscious, beliefs, and symbols layer

• Anandamaya kosha or bliss layer

Yoga Nidra helps a person to recognize these parts of themselves to explore the part of themselves that can simply witness these parts. Soon a person appreciates these changeable parts of their being as the primary way to illuminate that which is unchanging, their True Nature, that of Awareness itself. Doing so heals what I feel is the fundamental human problem which is feeling separate from Source.

Yoga Nidra for Healing

I believe that wellness is the byproduct of Awareness and as such, the Awareness a practitioner may experience through Yoga Nidra can catalyze myriad other kinds of transformations in many practical and useful ways such as help with stress, grief, setting goals, starting your day, getting great sleep, achieving a state of relaxed alertness, and even creating abundance in your life. These are just a few of the many topics you’ll find in my Yoga Nidra recordings.

Yoga Nidra Training

If you’re interested in learning how to facilitate this incredible practice in the power and authenticity of your own voice to bless the lives of 1:1 clients, classes, and yourself, I invite you to look at my live Yoga Nidra trainings or Online Yoga Nidra Teacher Training.

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Luxury Château Yoga Retreat in Bordeaux Region, France

June 13–19, 2020