Yoga Nidra Read online

  Consult your resources

  You’re never alone. Resources are available to assist and support you at every turn of the road of Yoga Nidra. See the resources and references sections for books, articles, tapes, people, and places to contact for support and further study. When you’re ready, go on retreat where you can learn Yoga Nidra to its fullest extent, where you can practice in community with like-minded people who share your interest of self-understanding and enlightened living. Remember, at any given time and day, thousands of people around the world are practicing with you. You’re always in good company when you practice Yoga Nidra.

  Yoga Nidra is a time-honored, reeducational process that teaches you how to blend profound relaxation with innate wisdom into every moment of your waking life. The practice of Yoga Nidra leads to sweeping changes within your mind and body, as well as in all of your interpersonal relationships. It’s a fundamental resource for transforming your physical health as well as reshaping your personal, interpersonal, and professional relationships. Please understand that Yoga Nidra is not hypnosis, but rather the deepest and most profound but very natural state of meditation. It enables you to reconnect to your deepest, most intimate, and relaxed receptivity of intuitive spontaneous intelligence. And it is simple to learn and easy to practice, and a tool that you can use throughout your lifetime.

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE MARVELOUS WORLD OF YOGA NIDRA

  It’s early morning, and you’re waking from a dream. You can just as easily fall back into the dream images as wake up to answer the call of nature. You’d like to stay here, wouldn’t you, in this peaceful twilight state of deliciousness. So you linger here, resting in this delightful state of equilibrium that exists between waking and sleeping, where all problems seem far away. And while you’re here, quite unexpectedly, an insight comes. Suddenly it’s all very clear, isn’t it? When you went to sleep the night before you were in the middle of a conundrum, but now you know what to do, the action you need to take. And you’ve experienced this before, haven’t you. Somehow, mysteriously, while absorbed in this twilight equanimity, insights spontaneously appeared; solutions arrived unbidden, and problems dissolved. How marvelous! How wondrous! How delightful! Welcome to the magnificent world of Yoga Nidra.

  WHY YOGA NIDRA?

  Yoga Nidra is an ancient, sacred yogic process of meditation that can be practiced for countless reasons: to induce profound relaxation in your body and mind; eliminate stress; overcome insomnia; solve personal and interpersonal problems; resolve trauma; and neutralize and overcome anxiety, fear, anger, and depression. The process deepens the experience of meditation, making it a lifetime habit, as well as encourages meditative inquiry in order to unravel the mystery of life and answer such questions as “Who am I?” “Why am I?” “What is all of this?” and “What is enlightenment?”

  During Yoga Nidra, you enter a profound state of receptive relaxation, all the while remaining totally aware and alert throughout its process. Yoga Nidra invites your innate intelligence and intrinsic clarity to rise to the surface of your conscious mind, allowing you to uncover and access the wisdom resources of your higher levels of consciousness. Your innate intelligence knows the exact solutions, revelations, and resolutions that you need in order to address all the various issues, problems, questions, and conundrums that you face in your daily life.

  It is common for spontaneous physical, psychological, and interpersonal transformational shifts to occur during Yoga Nidra as negative patterns of conditioning are burned away by the fire of discriminative wisdom, which ignites as you tap into your innate inner wisdom, a wisdom so powerful that it easily burns through even the most formidable destructive patterns of physical and psychological conditioning.

  During Yoga Nidra, David’s body feels tense and his heart is pounding with fear as he recalls an image of his parents fighting, their voices loud, angry, and harsh. He’s in his bedroom with the pillow over his head, terrified that his parents are going to kill themselves. He feels alone and unsafe.

  Yoga Nidra invites David to welcome in an opposite memory, a time when he feels calm and peaceful, and he finds himself in his bedroom as a little boy, tucked in between clean, white sheets. His parents are kneeling on either side, holding hands across his bed, saying a prayer they have created just for him. He hears them praying, word for word, and feels safe, secure, and loved.

  As an adult, David is locked into the belief that the world is an unsafe place. But now, as he rotates his attention over and over again through these opposites of experience, he realizes that he is loved and safe and that his parents love each other even amid their turmoil. This insight transforms his skewed version of the truth.

  Yoga Nidra then invites David to relinquish his memories and bask in these feelings of love, wholeness, and safety. Yoga Nidra is reintroducing David to his innate feeling of Being, of which love, wholeness, and safety are but three natural expressions that were obscured as a result of his early trauma. David arises from Yoga Nidra embodying a sense of inner calm that he never believed possible. David is experiencing how love, wholeness, and safety are not incompatible with anger and fear. True Nature—Being—welcomes all experiences and is love in action.

  AWAKENING FROM THE DREAM

  Yoga, often inadequately translated as “union,” represents both the action of awakening to, as well as the description of, our underlying True Nature or pure Being that is the birthing ground of authentic spontaneity.6 Nidra or “sleep,” on the other hand, is the state in which we are unconscious to True Nature, when we are identified with, and swayed by, thoughts and actions that are based on misperception and reactive patterns. Yoga Nidra represents a paradox and is a play on the words “sleep” and “awake” as it means “The Sleep of the Yogi,” and implies that the normal person is asleep to their True Nature through all states of consciousness—waking, dreaming, and deep sleep—while the yogi is one who is awake to and knows his or her True Nature across all states, even sleep.

  When we sleep, we believe our dream-self and dream-world are real. When we wake up, our dream-world gives way to the waking state, and we recognize that the dream-self and dream-world are actually empty of substance. They are only fabrications and projections of the mind.

  During waking consciousness, we perceive the world to be made up of solid and separate objects. We believe that our waking thoughts and the objects around us are real. But, could it be that waking-state thoughts and objects are also fabrications and projections of the mind, as empty of substance as our dream-self and dream-world? Yoga Nidra is the process whereby we explore and discover the truth of this fact.

  Usually we have no reason to question the validity of these beliefs. But there is good reason why we should. Yoga Nidra reveals that all dream and waking phenomena—thoughts, emotions, sensations, images, and the world around us—are constantly changing, coming, and going. Everything about our body, mind, and the world is constantly changing, morphing from one thing into another, a mass of swirling, changing sensations, emotions, thoughts, and images.

  When we are attached to life being consistent, we feel dissatisfied; we suffer, because life constantly changes. We are constantly searching within this sea of instability for something stable and constant to hold on to. Yoga Nidra reveals that the inner fabric of each of us is deep equanimity or peace that is stable and steady, and when realized, is recognized to be ever present even in the midst of life’s tumultuousness. This is what Yoga Nidra refers to as your fundamental True Nature, your innermost I-ness—deep peace that you know, without a shadow of a doubt, that is always present.

  Yoga Nidra teaches you how to inquire into the fundamental nature of your “I” that registers the fact that everything is changing. When we inquire into the who, what, and where of the “I” that is witnessing the smorgasbord of life’s changing phenomena, we discover that this “I” that we take ourselves to be is not solid either, but paradoxically, unlike everything else, it isn’t changing. Yoga Nidra helps
you realize that your True Self, or true I-ness, is an infinite and unqualified spacious Presence of Being in which everything, both waking and dream states, is born, unfolds, and dissolves. With Yoga Nidra, you explore and discover the truth of your True Self, as Pure Being.

  I am lying on the floor in Yoga Nidra, feeling contracted, sad, and alone. I gently inquire, “Who is this ‘I’ that is experiencing these feelings? Are there not two here, these feelings and the ‘I’ who is feeling them?” Suddenly, an inner shift of perspective occurs. Whereas a moment ago I was “in” these feelings, now these feelings are “in me.” I experience myself as spacious awareness in which these feelings are arising.

  As I lie here feeling both sadness and spacious awareness, I realize that awareness has been present throughout my lifetime, while feelings come and go within it. Foreground and background abruptly switch as I realize that “I” am Awareness. “I,” as Awareness, am not contracted and sad. “I” don’t feel limited to this body or to these passing feelings. “I” am the spaciousness within which this body lives. Unexpectedly, I sense a subtle truth and a course of action that I had overlooked. Sadness and contraction dissolve as I contemplate action that appears clear and right. But before springing into action, I want to lie here awhile, basking as pure Being, my true “I.” I realize all creativity springs from this source. This is the fountain of youth everyone is searching for and it is always here. How amazing, how astonishingly simple, hidden in plain sight—an Open Secret!

  AWAKE AT LAST

  When we are truly awake, we are no longer swayed by, or identified with, any thought, belief, emotion, sensation, image, action, or changing circumstance. We remain awake as True Nature, no matter the circumstance or situation, because the fundamental essence of True Nature is present across all states of waking, dreaming, and even deep sleep.

  Yoga Nidra reveals True Nature by its distinct flavor as unshakable peace, equanimity, compassionate love, discriminative wisdom, and authentic and spontaneous action. When we abide as True Nature, we embody our true humanity and become a purusha (Sanskrit: “one who dwells in the city of True Nature”), a true human being wherein our actions, thoughts, and deeds are in harmony with life and with the people around us, who we now recognize as purushas as well, even though they may not yet be awake to their True Nature.

  YOGA NIDRA TAKES YOU BEYOND WAKING AND SLEEPING

  During dreamless sleep, we are unaware of the stress, tension, and conflict that we experience during our waking state. In fact, we are totally unaware that we have either a body or a mind. In dreamless sleep, there is total disidentification from body and mind, yet we still exist, for when our mind and body reawaken we are conscious of having slept deeply without dreaming.

  During dreamless sleep, we experience a profound sense of contentment and equanimity, for when we awaken we feel rested and relaxed and can exclaim to others that we had a deep and restful sleep. In dreamless sleep, we abide as our Natural State that lies beyond and is totally disidentified from all stress and conflict. This is why we feel so rested upon awakening. The practice of Yoga Nidra teaches you how to consciously live in and as this Natural State of equanimity even as you go about daily life. Abiding in and as True Nature enables you to live through anxiety, tension, and conflict without losing your deep peace and equanimity. Yoga Nidra sensitizes you to recognize your inner light of clarity, which is always present as an expression of True Nature and that is constantly revealing your path of right understanding and right action during even your most difficult and challenging circumstances.

  RIGHT ACTION

  Yoga Nidra teaches you how to recognize and disidentify from your core negative beliefs and habit patterns, which hinder and cripple you from leading a truly contented life free from dissatisfaction and suffering. Dissatisfaction and suffering (Sanskrit: duhkha = “dissatisfaction,” “suffering”) arise when you mentally attach to expectations and outcomes that are other than what life is offering. When we accept life as it is, dissatisfaction and suffering cease, and we learn to deal with reality on its own terms, rather than through what our mind desires.

  When we accept life, we realize that every situation is paired with its perfect response of right action, which when engaged leads us to experience a sense of perfection in each moment. This can be startling to the mind when first encountered, but when you truly accept each moment and embody its perfectly paired response through right action, you will experience wonder, delight, and astonishment at how perfectly orchestrated every moment is.

  As our beliefs, assumptions, expectations, and misperceptions dissolve, we abide more and more in authenticity, which opens the door to glimpses of our True Nature as pure Being or Presence, which is the underlying source of authentic living. Yoga Nidra awakens us into the realization that we are not limited and finite as we mistakenly thought we were. We discover, instead, that we are Vastness that is infinite, joyous, loving, kind, compassionate, and always present, even in the midst of the greatest difficulty. When we live our Vastness, we discover that validation comes directly from True Nature, not from external authorities. We recover our gyroscope of internal stability, which naturally arises from True Nature, that cannot be shaken or disturbed by inner or outer events, nor swayed by the opinions of others.

  Yoga Nidra does not ask us to believe or disbelieve this or, for that matter, anything. Rather, it invites us to investigate what we assume to be true through a series of experiments or self-inquiries so that we may relinquish what we have been told and come to our own firsthand understanding about the nature of reality, the world, and ourselves. Yoga Nidra is, therefore, not a philosophy, but a way of living life from firsthand rather than secondhand information. It’s a process we engage in to heal from misperception, anxiety, and fear into equanimity, stability, and love. Here is Mary’s experience during a particular Yoga Nidra.

  Fear comes thundering in like the roar of the airplane I imagine I am sitting in. My body is drenched in cold sweat, heart pounding, gripped in terror. Every bump and sound of takeoff fuels my fear that something’s wrong; this airplane is going to crash! I lie here trembling with fear, body shaking. Then I search for an opposite experience and recall my mother rocking me in her arms. Tranquility and peace fill my body, replacing the fear of a moment before. As I bring together these two opposites of fear and tranquility, suddenly I feel free of both. Instead I feel myself as spacious, open equanimity, which transcends both my emotions of fear and peace. I feel unexpectedly liberated, free in a way I could never have imagined. Yoga Nidra has taken me beyond my feeling separate and introduced me to a realm where I feel one with the universe.

  And what has happened about my fear of flying? Recently, while flying east, guess what? No fear! Rather than feeling terrified of the plane, the plane feels like an extension of me. Who “I” am has expanded to include the airplane and the space all around me. A couple of bumps cause a slight contraction, but no upwelling of fear like before. How amazing and what a relief to feel at ease inside an airplane. I am grateful. Yoga Nidra has relieved me of this terrible fear and opened me to a new sense of freedom and oneness with the universe that I could never have imagined possible.

  EVERY “THING” IS COMPRESSED SPACE

  We have been taught to believe that the physical world is real and solid. But is this so? The mind says it is. Familial and cultural beliefs say that it is so. But when we actually investigate the solidity of any object, we find only vast space. Solidity gives way to molecules; molecules give way to atoms; atoms give way to electrons, which give way to quarks, which give way to energy, which gives way to empty spaciousness. When we truly inquire, the solidity that was here a moment before dissolves. We discover for ourselves that matter is actually only compressed space, devoid of solidity.

  Are we separate from what we observe? The mind says, “Yes.” But when we observe something, we influence what is being observed because we are not separate from what we are observing.7 Our belief in separation is actually an
illusion that dissolves in the light of true inquiry.

  THE EGO-I IS AN AFTERTHOUGHT

  We believe in the reality of our ego-I as a separate and distinct entity. Yet when we inquire to find the location of this “I,” we find neither location nor solidity. We discover that the ego-I is actually an afterthought, rather than a point of independent will and initiation. Willfulness remains, yet we discover that true “I-ness” is not separate from the spacious Being in which it and everything else arises. I, you, and every “thing” are actually one, not two.8 This is how one friend describes her experience of Being True Nature.

  Every day I live a fresh reprieve from being somebody, without reference to my “former life.” It is beautiful and a surprise all the time. There is no discipline, except listening, which is completely outside being reductive or positive. Listening brings this mind to a halt, to its real use. I feel overwhelmed and brought to my knees by it, yet without any sense of diminution. It is astonishing that all of this happens without struggle, nor giving up any “thing.”