About Me
Thank you for your interest in Yoga Nidra. Now, what is Yoga Nidra????
There are many extensive definitions of this practice, to sum it up, it is the practice of releasing tension from you mind, body, and spirit with the power of your mind.
Yoga Nidra, which is derived from the Tantras, is a powerful technique in which you learn to relax consciously. In Yoga Nidra sleep is not regarded as relaxation. For absolute relaxation you must remain aware.
It is a systematic method of inducing complete physical, mental, and emotional relaxation. During this practice, one appears to be asleep, but the consciousness is functioning at a deeper level of awareness. For this reason, Yoga nidra is often referred to as psychic sleep or deep relaxation with inner awareness. In this threshold state between sleep and wakefulness, contact with the subconscious and unconscious dimensions occurs spontaneously.
In Yoga nidra, the state of relaxation is reached by turning inwards, away from outer experiences. How does this happen??? The answer is simple. When relaxation is reached, the receptivity is greater. When consciousness is connected to all the senses, the receptivity is less. This is the secret to Yoga nidra.
Whether you think too much or you don't think at all, you are accumulating tensions. If you work physically or you do not work at all, you are accumulating tensions. If you sleep too much, or don't sleep at all, guess what, your accumulating tensions. They accumulate in the muscular, emotional, and mental systems.
In Yoga nidra, we realize that if the mind is tense, the stomach will also be tense. If the stomach is tense, then the whole circulatory system is tense. So, the relaxation from tensions is a primary concern.
Despite a superficial sense of well being, most people are full of tensions all the time. They habitually bite their nails, scratch their head, stroke their chin, or tap their feet, or they may pace around restlessly, talk compulsively, display constant irritability, or chain smoke.
Most people do these things because they lack awareness of their own inner tension. They may think that they are relaxed, but a closer look reveals that they are not. Even while sleeping, thoughts and worries revolve in the mind, so that the tense person wakes up feeling exhausted. To relaxe completely, the inner tensions of the body, mind, and emotions must be released. Yoga Nidra is the scientific method of removing these tensions.
Through the practice of Yoga nidra, we are not only relaxing, but restructuring and reforming our whole personality from within. If you practice yoga nidra then the nature of your whole mind can be changed, diseases can be cured, and your creative genius restored. The subconscious and the conscious mind are the most powerful forces in the human being. The practice of Yoga nidra has the capacity of penetrating into the depths of the human mind.
In Yoga nidra, the most effective means of training the mind is found in the resolve, or resolution, in sanskrit it is called sankalpa. This is an affirmation you make for yourself, and repeat it 3 times to yourself before, and at the end of the practice of Yoga nidra. It is an important stage of Yoga nidra and a powerful method of reshaping your personality and direction in life along positive lines.
If you know what you want to achieve in life, the resolve can be the creator of your destiny. Whether you want to be a painter, writer, musician, or a spiritual leader, you can train yourself through this simple technique, but first you must have a direction.
The resolve takes the form of a short mental statement which is impressed on the subconscious mind when it is receptive and sensitive to autosuggestion during yoga nidra. Before and after the practice of Yoga nidra there is a short period dedicated to the resolve. It is like planting a seed in the mind.
Yoga Nidra is a practice which brings the deeper layers of the psyche into conscious experience. In every area of the brain, there are millions and millions of impressions stored in the form of archetypes.
These archetypes are the sum total of each and every experience of life, which we call karma. Every experience we undergo consciously and subconsciously is registered by the subconscious mind, and in the course of time it turned into what we call an archetype.
During the practice of Yoga nidra your consciousness travels through one layer of consciousness to another, according to it's possibility and capacity. Sometimes it goes very deep, then you have more fantastic and exploding experiences. Or sometimes the consciousness is not able to go deep, and only remains in the precinct of the conscious mind, and you have some sort of relaxation, sleep, or pleasant experience.
It is impossible to ignore the connection between the discoveries of modern brain researchers and those of the enlightened yogis, who long ago evolved the practice of yoga nidra.
Besides the rotation of the bodies’ consciousness to specific points across the body, there are many other practices derived from the Tantras, such as, awareness of the body, the brain and internal organs; contact between earth and body; feelings of heaviness and lightness, heat and cold, pain and pleasure.
After relaxation of the sensory-motor surface of the brain, the practice shifts to arousal of feelings or experiences. These seem to emanate from the core of our being, while simultaneously being experienced in a part of the body or throughout the body as a whole.
Throughout the body tissues and structures there are numerous specially adapted sensory nerve terminals which respond to specific types of stimuli, including touch, pressure, change of position, temperature, pain, pleasure, and so on.
These tiny sense organs are continually gathering information from all parts of the body and relaying it to specific sites deep within the brain. Brain researchers have been able to locate and isolate the majority of these important centers in the base of the brain.
As we awaken the sensations of heaviness and lightness, heat and cold, pleasure and pain, etc., we stimulate those centers of the brain responsible for maintaining harmony between our inner and outer environments.
The pairing and alternation of these sensations in yoga nidra helps to maintain this homeostasis balance and even evolves it by bringing normally involuntary unconscious functions under control.
The various experiences which individuals have in their lives lie buried in the past. What remains in the mind and in the brain is only a memory, but the actual experience itself can ultimately be recreated by this systematic routine.
Then one not only vividly remembers pain/pleasure, heat/cold, etc., but relives it. In yogic terms, the capacity to completely relive a past experience is one of an evolved and truly creative mind.
After hearing some beautiful music which you like, you will certainly remember it. You may even imagine or feel it. But if you close your eyes and really begin to hear that music inside, exactly as you heard it originally, it is an exploding experience of reality which changes the whole structure of the mind completely.
This is the reason why the experiences of pleasure and pain, heat and cold, lightness and heaviness, should be brought to the forefront of the minds real experiences.
If you are trying to feel heaviness, you should feel your body so heavy that even if you want to lift your hands of feet, you can't, orif you are feeling heat, you must feel the heat in such a way that you perspire.
Just to remember or feel heat is not enough. It has to become a real, living experience.
The technique of visualization in Yoga nidra is an important practice for unlocking the stored up contents of the unconscious mind, which normally only manifest during dreams.
Yoga nidra has been termed as "sleepless sleep" because we learn to enter the state between sleep and wakefulness without loss of awareness. This is the beginning of the experience of yoga nidra, but its meaning and significance go beyond this.
Unenlightened man is dreaming constantly, even when he is awake. He does not know this because his sensory functions are extroverted. The moment you cut off your awareness from the sensory functions and relax, you begin to witness the dreams.
This is exactly what Yoga nidra accomplishes. The psyche of man is dreaming all the time, consciously as well as unconsciously. The dreams we have at night are only a small part of this.If the dream state is to be recognized and used to gain knowledge and help our evolution in life, a good communication between the dream and waking states must be developed and maintained, and this is precisely what is induced during the visualization sequences.
The subconscious and unconscious material of the mind is awakened and released to become integrated into consciousness. This is the dawning of creative imagination as distinct from the usual processes of daydreaming and sleeping.
Guided imagery in Yoga nidra is a method of using the symbol or image as a catalyst to provoke a reaction in the unconscious parts of the mind. Everything we experience through the senses, and even in thoughts, leaves an imprint on the mind.
