I am feeling very blessed and proud to have guided a yoga-nidra session today for our TAFE class ~ we’re training to be mental-health peer-support workers, and part of that is learning self-care practices, which I have been studying and trialing for yonks now:
yoga nidra has helped me self-regulate so much over the years, I am really glad to have introduced some folk to it. One of the students had a gentle emotional release when I guided them to imagine their safe place, and my heart expands a bit each time I think I had that influence on another <<<333
I was going to bring my speaker and just hit play on a recording by someone else, but decided: I didn’t want to lug a speaker about; I could wing it, trust myself, back myself, and that paid off. I did really well, and folks were grateful, another student experienced the hypnagogic state and of course someone fell asleep, hopefully getting exactly the deep rest their body needed but their mind might not have otherwise allowed.
It’s a beautiful and profound practice, yoga nidra ~ popularised by Huberman as NSDR (non-sleep deep rest) if you want to do the version that’s a bit more science-y.
I should say “modern Western” science-y because really yoga is among the original sciences, a true science of the spirit and I’m really glad and profoundly grateful to be joining the ranks of folk who pass that on through culture, which I learnt today has been described as “collective conditioning of the mind”, but that’s another story.
(Briefly: we can undo that conditioning and re-condition our minds and hearts to be more spontaneously compassionate ~ the theme of today.)
May your rest be deep and only vaguely sleepy 🙂 Reach out if you’re curious about yoga nidra, I’d love to chat about it more and trial this meditation-facilitation thing a bit more. Get in touch via Heartwards’ Get Support page.
Kokoro 心 Heart 