Go Away to Go In
In a couple of weeks I’m headed to Kripalu to spend a week studying and practicing Yoga Nidra with Jennifer Reiss. I made the plans about 6 months ago, when I was contemplating my first Autumn without kids at home, and anticipating the need to immerse myself in contemplative practice of some kind. Let’s just say it felt like a more positive choice—not to mention less melodramatic—than beating my breast, rending my garments, and keening with loss. I suppose I could have chosen instead to train for a marathon but frankly, I’m tired. (10K is more my speed anyway.)
Fall is an interesting and fruitful time to withdraw a bit and tune into to the powerful oceans of the unconscious mind, to see what they might offer up. The gears are already slowly and gorgeously grinding toward winter….a little color here and there in the trees, and that morning mist hanging in the river valley and waiting for the sun to crash through is as beautiful and heart wrenching as the most poignant work of art. I can feel my own soul straining toward deeper communion with myself, and so off I will go.
So, what IS Yoga Nidra?
The literal translation of Nidra is sleep. You will hear people call it “yogic sleep”, but Yoga Nidra is a dynamic state, not the unconscious sleep of nighttime. in Yoga Nidra, with the guidance of an instructor’s voice, you leave the waking state, go past the dreaming state, and go to a state of deep sleep, yet remain awake. Ordinary sleep renews and heals the body and brain and is powerful in its own right, but Yoga Nidra has the ability to alter your unconscious programming or samskaras, to unleash the power of the deep unconscious. When you purify the samskaras—those deep impressions that are the driving force behind Karma—the healing aspect of the practice goes well beyond “deep relaxation”, though that is one of its many happy by-products.
Yoga Nidra works by immersing your brain in the healing rhythms of the alpha state. In this state, you access both logical left brain and the intuitive, insightful right brain, and align your sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems to restore the body and mind to balance.
Yoga Nidra inspires transformation from the deepest core of your being and provides you with powerful tools to eliminate stress and banish self-destructive habits and thoughts. While it is difficult to describe how amazing it feels, I will say Yoga Nidra takes you beyond the barriers of the five senses. It feels like you slip completely free of the grasp of struggle with self. It feels, for a time, like absolute freedom.
I hope to hold Yoga Nidra sessions occasionally at the studio. In the meantime, if you are curious, here is a YouTube link to a guided Nidra practice with Jennifer Reiss. Enjoy!
