Prepare for the practice of Yoga Nidra.
Before we begin,
Allow the body to find the shape that asks the least of it.
Perhaps something beneath the knees,
Something soft to cradle the head.
A blanket drawn over you,
Maybe an eye mask.
Or some warm,
Cozy socks.
Whatever you need to bring in to find the deepest comfort possible.
These small tendings matter,
So take your time.
They tell the body,
You are safe to be here.
You are safe to let go.
Allow the eyelids to close,
Or if you prefer,
Let the gaze fall downward and grow soft.
And feel what's beneath you.
The Earth holding you.
Never asking anything of you.
Always there.
Supporting you.
Let go to this.
Let the face unclench.
Go soft.
Release.
The brow.
The jaw.
Bend the shoulders like two heavy coats slipping from their hooks.
The hands unfurling like ferns.
Everything arriving and settling.
Everything settling and letting go.
Be here in this moment,
Fully and wholly.
And know that I'll be here guiding you all the way through.
But treat my words like a lantern,
Not a lead.
If you wander from them,
You've lost nothing.
If your own images rise,
Know that there are wiser guys for you than mine.
And if sleep invites you,
Then sleep was the medicine you needed today.
Trust the process.
Trust the practice.
Now silently with quiet intent,
Affirm to yourself.
I am practicing Yoga Nidra.
In today's practice,
We're going to explore rest as a gateway,
A portal,
If you like,
Into the experience of being.
We are,
After all,
Human beings.
Yet most days we live as human doings.
Forever keeping busy,
Reaching,
Proving and feeling more often than not that things need improving.
As though we were a house still under construction,
Never quite fit to live in.
Three and a half centuries ago,
The philosopher Pascal wrote,
All the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact,
That they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber.
Today.
We stay.
Patanjali said,
Yoga is the stilling of the ripples of the mind.
Then in the very next breath of text,
He tells us what's revealed when the waters go still.
Then the seer abides in its own true form.
Not becomes.
Not achieves.
Abides.
The way the moon's reflection is already in the sea.
Waiting only for the wind to drop.
The Upanishads,
Older still,
Describe us as layered like the pearls of a lotus,
Five sheaths or koshas,
The body of food and flesh,
The body of breath and life force,
The body of thought,
The body of deep,
Intuitive knowing.
And fold it at the very heart of the flower.
Anandamaya Kosha the body of bliss.
This bliss is not something that's added later on.
It's not something you earn or work for.
So there's nothing to build here today,
Nothing to mend or fix.
Only to rest deeply enough for the waters to clear and see what has been shining there all along.
Let your hearing drift outwards now,
To the very rim of the world.
The farthest sounds faint as birds on a distant hill.
No need to name them.
Just let them be sound and nothing more.
Now touch.
Air resting on the skin like a silk scarf,
The quiet weight of the blanket.
Whatever scent drifts through the room.
Familiar,
Faint or barely there.
Taste,
The tongue resting soft in the mouth,
The lingering trace of the day.
And sight.
The velvet dark.
Behind the eyelids.
Perhaps a glow of light.
Filtered through them like sun through a curtain.
Five doorways to the world.
And one by one.
Like shutters closing on a summer evening.
We let them gently draw too.
Let the world grow faint.
The senses folding inward.
Gabble.
Quiet.
And now,
Sankalpa.
The heart's deepest intention.
Spoken in the present tense,
Because beneath all our striving,
It is already so.
If you carry a Sancalpa of your own,
Welcome it now,
Or rest with the one offered today.
I am complete and whole,
Just as I am.
Not a wish to be mended.
A remembering of what was never broken.
So silently now,
Three times from the depth of you.
Repeat to yourself.
I am complete and whole,
Just as I am.
And then release it.
Like a pearl,
Let it fall into the deep,
Clear water.
Watch it sing,
Turning slowly,
Catching the last of the light.
Until it comes to rest on the sea floor.
In the dark.
Let it rest here.
Now awareness goes traveling through the body.
Let it move like moonlight,
Simply resting upon whatever is there.
Luminous.
As you hear each body part name.
Allow the moonlight to settle there a moment and then move on.
Nothing to do,
Nothing to feel.
Bring your awareness to your right hand and your right hand thumb.
First finger.
Second finger.
Third finger.
And Littlefinger.
The palm of the right hand.
The back of the hand.
The Right Risk.
Lower arm.
Elbow.
Upper arm.
Shoulder.
The right armpit.
The right side of chest.
To the waist.
And your right hip.
Thigh.
Thing.
Ankle.
Top of foot.
The right big toe.
Second toe.
The Toe.
Fourth toe and little toe.
The sole of the right foot.
The whole of the foot.
Now move your awareness and your full attention to your left hand.
And to your left hand thumb.
First finger.
Second finger.
Third finger,
And little finger.
The palm of the left hand.
Back of hand.
The Left Wrist.
Lower arm.
Elbow.
Upper arm.
Shoulder.
The left armpit.
The left side of chess.
To the waist.
The left hip.
Thigh.
Me.
Shit.
Angle.
The top of the left foot.
To the left big tongue.
Second hope.
Bad type.
Fourth toe and little toe.
The soul of the left foot.
The whole of your foot.
The back of the body.
Right heel.
Left heel.
Right car.
Lefka.
The space is behind both your knees.
Right clues.
Left glute.
The lower back.
The middle back.
The upper back.
Right shoulder blade.
Left shoulder blade.
The spine,
Bead by bead.
Like a string of pearls.
From tailbone to skull.
The back of the neck.
The back of the head.
The crown of the head.
Over to your front body.
The Forage.
Right eyebrow.
Left eyebrow.
The point between the eyebrows.
Right eye.
Left eye.
Right ear.
Left ear.
Right cheek.
The nose.
The tip of the nose.
Apple it.
Lowely.
The meeting of the lips.
The chin.
The jaw.
The threat.
Right collarbone.
Left collarbone,
And the space between your collarbones.
The center of the chest.
Your heart space.
Upper abdomen.
Naval.
Lower belly.
Pelvis.
The whole right leg.
The whole left land.
Both legs together.
The whole right arm.
The whole left arm.
Both arms together.
The whole back of the body.
The whole front of the body.
Now the whole body.
The whole body illuminated by moonlight.
The whole body,
Complete and whole.
Invite your awareness to come to rest on the breath now.
Watch it the way you might watch waves arrive on a shore.
Without counting them.
Without asking them to change in any way.
The breath is a quiet teacher of being.
It doesn't strive.
It doesn't compare this breath with the last.
It simply arrives.
And leaves.
Then arrives the gate.
The air leaving you now.
Will be drawn in by a tree,
A stranger.
Or a child not yet born.
We are all drinking from the same sky.
Follow it now in the belly.
A slow swell.
Like the sea lifting a moored boat.
A slow settling point.
Now we'll count the breath down from 18 to 1.
Silently.
Breathing in.
AT.
Breathing out.
18.
Breathing in.
Seventeen.
Breathing out.
17.
Each number a step down a spiral stair,
Deeper into the quiet.
If the count slips away.
Simply return to 18.
There's no wrong step on this journey.
Begin whenever you're ready.
Wherever you've reached,
Set the numbers down now,
Like stones at the side of a path.
And the breath carries on,
Unattended.
Like a river through the night.
Become aware of the body lying on the floor.
The whole shape of it stretched out like a coastline seen from the sky.
Feel each place where the body meets the ground.
The back of the head.
Resting.
Like a stone in a riverbed.
The shoulder blades.
Two flat wings folded and at rest.
The backs of the arms.
The backs of the hands.
The sacrum,
Broad and heavy,
Like the keel of a boat pulled up on sand.
The backs of the thighs.
The calves.
The heels,
Two small anchors.
Feel the weight of the body.
Pouring down into these meeting places.
Heavy as warm wax.
Heavy.
As a sleeping child in your arms.
Let the ground take all of it.
It is more than strong enough.
Now let awareness travel down beneath you.
Through the floor.
Through soil dark and alive,
Through clay and chalk,
An old stone laid down over millions of years.
Down to the great warm body.
Of the Earth herself.
And now,
Notice the space where the body ends and the ground begins.
How the edge softens like the border between sea and sky on a hazy day.
Body melting into ground.
Ground rising into body.
Two Shores.
Of one time.
Let the whole body grow heavier with every out-breath.
The limbs heavy as river stones.
The whole body sinking,
Like an anchor settling into soft sand.
And now lightness.
Let the body grow light.
Lighter with every in-breath.
Light as a feather,
Lifted on a warm breath of air.
So light you feel you might drift up from the floor,
Like a seed carried on the wind.
Now let heaviness return in a different form.
Feel the heaviness of doing.
The heavy load of busyness carried everywhere.
Feel where it presses on you.
The shoulders.
The chest.
And now the lightness of being.
The straps loosening,
The heavy load sliding to the ground.
The stones return to the earth.
Nothing to carry.
Nowhere to get to.
Light as morning mist,
Lifting from a meadow.
Simply here.
Simply being.
The weight of doing.
The ease of being.
Feel them both now.
At the same time.
Now,
Feel yourself becoming small.
Drawing in.
Contraction.
A clenched back.
A creature curled in its burrow.
As small as a single seed.
As a grain of sand.
Smaller still.
Feel the smallness,
The density.
The drawing in.
And now,
Expansion.
Feel yourself widening.
Opening outwards.
Spreading like dawn across a valley.
Like ink blooming in water.
Vast is the sky.
Over the open sea.
Vast is still.
The whole night sky and all its stars held within you.
The seed.
The sky.
Contraction.
Expansion.
The tight bud.
And the full-blown rose.
Feel both now.
At the same time.
Notice the one who felt them all.
And notice what remains.
Now bring your awareness to the space in front of the closed eyes,
The space behind the forehead.
Chidakash.
The Sky of Consciousness.
Gaze here as you would gaze into the night sky from a dark hillside.
Perhaps it is velvet black.
Perhaps there are colours drifting through.
Violets,
Indigo,
A faint gold.
Perhaps patterns or flickers,
Or shapes that form and dissolve like weather.
If thoughts come,
Watch them cross this inner sky like birds at twilight.
No need to follow them home.
Just rest here,
Observing.
As The Witness.
The one who sees.
I'll now name a series of images.
Let each one flick into view as best it can,
And then let it go as the next arrives.
Imagine a candle flame,
Perfectly still.
Snow falling on a quiet field.
A newborn's closed fist.
A hammock between two trees.
An old woman's open palms.
A feather drifting down.
A full moon over a city of lights.
The same moon.
In the desert.
Smoke rising from the chimney.
A sunflower turning to the sun.
A shell held to your ear.
A drop of rain on a leaf.
The drop falling and meeting a stream.
The stream becoming a river.
The River.
Opening into the sea.
The river opening.
Into the sea.
Let the sea come fully into view now.
An ocean without edges,
Rolling out to meet the sky.
Blue-green and silver,
Breathing in long,
Slow swells.
On its surface,
Waves are rising and falling.
Rising and falling.
Each one shaped by its own wind,
Its own moment.
Its own small piece of sky.
Some lived high and crest in white.
Some barely ruffle the water.
Some catch the sun.
And scatter it like coins.
No two the same.
And yet every one of them.
Is the sea.
Rising for a while to take a shape.
Then falling back into the water,
It never left.
And now,
Let us soften and slow.
Its crest folding gently back into itself.
And let it sing.
Down beneath the glitter of the surface.
Down through the cool green light,
Through the blue that deepens as it falls.
Into the indigo stillness,
Where sunlight turns to velvet.
Here in the deep.
No wind can reach.
There is no high and no low.
No ahead and no behind.
Only water.
Resting.
In water.
Vast.
Parts of the home.
So now let everything go.
To see.
The Sky.
The images.
The words.
Even the effort of resting.
Nothing to hold.
Only being.
I am.
This is the ground beneath the ground.
The place you rise from each morning.
And fall back into each night.
It cannot be earned.
It cannot be taken.
This is why we return to this practice.
Not to become someone new.
But to come home.
Again.
And again.
To who we already are.
Now recall the pearl you let fall into the deep.
It has been resting on the sea floor all this while.
Gathering luster in the dark.
Let it rise now and repeat your sankalpa three times,
Your own or today's,
With the whole of your being.
I am complete and whole,
Just as I am.
Now let the breath grow fuller,
Like the first breeze of morning moving through an open window.
Let sounds drift back into your world.
The shape of the room reassemble itself around you.
The texture of the fabric against your skin.
The temperature of the air.
The floor still here,
Still holding.
Gather up what you would like to take from this practice,
As you might pocket a smooth stone on the beach.
Leave the rest on the shore.
Let movement return,
The way that sap returns to branches in the spring.
Slowly from the inside.
A curl of the toes,
A spreading of the fingers,
A gentle rock of the head from side to side.
There is all the time in the world.
And then when it feels right.
Just turn onto one side and pause there,
Curled like a fern.
May you know that you have always been a Full Moon.
Even on the nights you could see only a sliver,
That the joy you went looking for in far places was sleeping all the while beneath your own breath.
May you rest often and rest deep.
And in the resting,
Be returned.
To the one you have always been.
Then in your own time,
Allow your eyes to open onto the day.
And as you go,
Carry these words from Walt Whitman,
I exist as I am,
And that is enough.
As you are.
This practice of Yoga Nidra is now complete.
Thank you for taking the time.
To practice with me today.
I wish you the very best for the rest of your day or evening ahead.
Thank you for your time.
Harriyom Tat Sat.
Harriyom Tat Sat.
Harriyom Tat Sat.
Thank you.
