What is Yoga Nidra?
Yoga Nidra is a guided meditation technique from ancient India that helps with deep rest whilst being in conscious awareness, in savasana (corpse pose), lying on your back with legs and feet shoulder distance, arms along your body with the palms up.
It’s a practise that takes us to a Theta state, that sweet spot, between being awake and sleep, where we find rest and are temporarily disconnected from our senses: touch, smell, sight, hearing, taste and the sixth sense, mind, which we don’t reach when we are dreaming or in deep sleep.
The many benefits are stress reduction, support with mental clarity and better wellbeing on physical, emotional and mental levels.
How does this work?
We practice for approximately 30 minutes, starting with gentle asanas, yoga postures to prepare, and I’ll guide you through the process when you turn inwards. To reach the state of deep rest, it’s essential to raise attention on how I guide you with the breath, body scan and visualisations. This practise is ideal for individuals who are overthinkers or have ADHD. At the end of the practice, I guide you back to the waking state. No experience is needed for this practise, just your trust to follow my instructions.
I got into my Yoga Nidra practise a few years ago after a recommendation from my friend, who’s also a Yoga Nidra Teacher, for my insomnia. I didn’t sleep for weeks because of my overthinking mind. I had such a hard time switching off, affecting my sleep and my performance at work. It was a challenge to work on projects and stay sharp after 4 in the afternoon. I tried microdosing on Psilocybin to help with focus, but I will write about that another time, and why I preferred Yoga Nidra.
Image by tjulip.com
What I love about this practice is that I can temporarily disconnect from my thoughts or feelings and experience a different reality. There were suddenly options to feel different, which was refreshing, as staying awake with my thoughts drove me insane at times. I finally managed to get my rest and drift off to sleep. After practising for a longer time, improving my sleep, I dove deeper into my practise by processing feelings alive inside me and gaining perspective. When I had periods of anxiety, it was helpful for me to feel something else, which gave me the realisation that I have a choice to feel differently and can act towards that with an intention, a Sankalpa.
My Yoga Nidra practise gave me the experience of the 8 limbs of Yoga, from Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, to live a meaningful life with liberation. I will dedicate a blog to this in the near future. How Yoga currently shows up in wellness has been commodified, made very reductive and palatable. It’s a waste to forget the teachings, as they make a better society we all benefit from.
