Prepare for the practice of yoga nidra.
Take time to arrive.
Lie on your back if it's comfortable.
With your legs stretched out in front of you,
Your feet can fall open to the sides.
Ensure you have a straight spine.
Arms can be by your sides a little away from your torso and find comfort here.
Today's practice has been created to help regulate your nervous system.
Your nervous system has been working vigilantly,
Quietly,
Without your asking or knowing,
Every moment of every day.
And what we're doing here is something it rarely gets.
Permission to rest without interruption or reason.
Allow your jaw to soften.
Your face to ease.
Your forehead to widen,
Releasing the creases of your day.
Your tongue can drop from the roof of the mouth.
Close down your eyes.
And feel the backs of the eyes grow soft.
These are small invitations.
But they matter more than you might expect.
Take all the time you need to find your deepest comfort.
We turn inward.
Pratyahara,
Translating loosely as the withdrawal of the senses.
The moment when awareness,
Which has been facing outward all day,
All week,
Perhaps for as long as you can remember,
It begins slowly to turn around,
To turn inward.
Feel that for a moment.
The senses have been working hard.
The eyes processing.
The ears sorting signal from noise.
The skin reporting temperature,
Pressure.
Contact.
The nervous system behind all of it.
Cataloging.
Interpreting.
Deciding.
All the time.
But here.
Now.
You can allow the ears to soften.
Sounds might still be arriving,
And yet the quality of listening can change.
Rather than reaching towards sound.
Let sound come to you.
Be the still point at the center,
Receiving rather than seeking.
Without engagement.
The same invitation for the skin.
Feel the places where the body meets the floor.
Meets clothing.
Or the air.
And then gradually let the boundaries soften.
Less reading of the outside,
More simply being inside.
Allow the outer world to begin gently to receive.
Pratyahara is the preparation.
The exhale.
Before the dive.
The world outside this room will be there when you return.
For this time,
There is only this,
The weight of the body.
The movement of the breath.
And whatever arises when you are finally quiet enough to notice.
We move now to Sancalpa.
Sankalpa is a living thing.
It is a short,
True statement.
Something the heart already knows,
Even if the mind has been looking the other way.
It is not a goal.
It is a recognition.
Beginning with the words,
I am.
Repeat your Sankalpa silently to yourself three times in the space that follows.
Now awareness begins to move through the body.
Allow this awareness to become like water.
Feel the fluidity.
The movement without effort,
Your own awareness flowing through your body the way a river flows through land,
Trusting its way effortlessly.
Move your awareness in line with what you hear.
Bring your awareness now to the right hand,
The right hand thumb.
Index finger.
Middle finger.
Ring finger.
Little finger.
The whole right hand,
Open like a delta where the river meets the sea.
The palms.
The rest.
The Forum.
The soft inside of the elbow.
The upper arm.
The shoulder.
The river pooling briefly at the right armpit.
The right side of the ribcage.
The right hip.
The right thigh.
At the back of the knee.
The car.
The ankle.
The heel.
The sole of the right foot.
And out through the right big toe.
Secondo.
Third toe.
Fourth toe and little toe.
The current,
Spent and gentle,
Reaching the very edges of your body.
Now move your attention to the left hand.
The left hand thumb.
Index finger.
Middle finger.
Ring finger and little finger.
The whole of the left hand.
The palm.
The rest.
The Forum.
The inside of the elbow.
The upper arm.
The shoulder.
The left armpit.
The left side of the ribcage.
The left hip.
The thigh.
The back of the knee.
The carve.
The ankle.
The heel.
The soul of the left foot.
And out through the left big toe.
SECOND HOPE Bird Taupe Fourth toe and little toe.
The current,
Spent and gentle,
Reaching the very edges of your body.
The river's current now turns to the back of the body.
The right shoulder blade.
The left shoulder blade.
The two of them like riverbanks,
Broad and steady.
The groove of the spine.
The river's own bed.
Carrying.
Everything.
The upper back.
The middle back.
The lower back.
The sacrum.
The coccyx.
Here the river slows,
Deepens,
Pulls in the basin of the pelvis that still dark water that has always been here.
Long before thought.
Long before memory.
And now upward.
The crown of the head.
The foreign.
The space between the brows,
Where the river surfaces.
Into light.
The right eyebrow.
The left eyebrow.
The right eye.
The left eye.
The bridge of the nose.
Right nostril.
Left nostril.
We're inside.
Becomes outside.
And outside.
Becomes inside.
Endlessly.
Right cheek.
Left Chi.
The upper lip.
The lower lip.
The chin.
The jaw loosening,
Releasing its banks.
The lung column of the throat.
The chest,
The soft place beneath the ribs,
The belly rising and falling like the surface of slow water.
The navel.
Your lower abdomen.
The whole front body like a still surface reflecting sky.
The whole back body like a riverbed.
Dark.
Held.
Patient.
The whole right side.
The whole left side.
The whole body.
The whole body.
One river.
One breath.
Rest here now.
Let the current settle.
You are the water,
And you are the banks,
And you are the deep bed beneath,
All at once.
Together.
As one.
There is a nerve that runs through you just like a river.
It begins at the brainstem,
That oldest,
Deepest part of the brain that was here long before language,
Long before thought as we know it.
And it travels down.
Through the thread.
Pass the heart.
Into the lungs.
Further still.
Into the belly.
The Gods.
The viscera.
Reaching,
Branching.
Listening.
This is the Vegas Snack.
The wanderer,
The quiet intelligence,
Moving through the whole interior landscape of you,
Reading everything it touches,
Responding to everything it meets.
It speaks in pulse and breath and the quality of space in the belly.
Allow yourself to feel into the pathway of this nerve.
Begin at the base of the skull.
The ridge where the head meets the neck.
This is where the Vegas emerges.
Follow it downward to the throat,
That tender corridor where so much is held and more often than not,
Never quite expressed.
Feel whether there is ease here or a holding.
Nothing is wrong.
Simply notice.
Further into the chest,
The heart sits within reach of the vagus nerve,
Enveloped in its branches.
When you feel moved by something beautiful,
This is the vagus,
Translating the world into feelings.
And on to the belly.
The gut brain.
The enteric nervous system.
Communicating upward along the same pathway.
The body is always in conversation with itself.
Rest in that knowing for a moment.
You are not a mind that has a body.
Nor a body that houses a mind.
You are a whole,
A whole listening intently to itself.
The river has settled now.
A gentle flow.
Without obstruction.
What remains is something quieter.
An awareness that can move between extremes,
The way that water moves between light and shadow,
Stillness and current.
Without preference.
Without resistance.
We will visit some sensory opposites briefly,
Stepping into each one.
Then releasing it,
The way a river releases everything it carries,
Eventually to the sea.
Feel the body as impossibly dense,
Poured onto the floor,
Sinking beyond it.
A sense of weightedness.
Now let that evaporate.
Weightlessness.
Barely there.
Almost no edges at all.
Move between these two states of being.
A feeling of weightedness,
Heaviness,
A density.
And then to weightlessness and lightness.
Almost no edges at all.
And then move to notice a hum in your body.
A readiness,
An energy of aliveness.
And then to rest.
True rest,
Like water that has found a hollow in the rock and stopped,
Held in a quiet pool of stillness.
The invitation is to move between these two states of being.
The nervous system's lit quality,
The fine energy of aliveness,
And then to stillness.
Be held.
In your quiet pool of stillness.
And then hold those two together in your mind's eye.
The energy and the stillness.
And then let both dissolve into the same.
Two states of being belonging to the one same seed.
Of awareness.
A series of images will come now.
In quick succession.
Allow them to come into your mind's eyes.
Holding only for a moment.
And then let them go,
Let them dissolve.
You are traveling toward the layer below the thinking mind.
Let it carry you though.
Imagine.
A stone in water,
Going nowhere.
Snow falling on a river's surface.
The sound of a door closing in an empty house.
A seed underground in winter.
One white cloud crossing an otherwise clear sky.
The underside of a leaf.
Your own hand open.
The river at night.
Blackwater moving.
Softly.
Moonlight across a wooden floor.
A flock of birds turning,
All at once,
Without signal.
The moment between breathing out and breathing in.
Silt settling at the river's bed.
The colour of deep water.
Stillness.
Only stillness.
Stay in this place wherever the images carry you.
Your nervous system knows this country.
It is where it travels when it can finally,
Finally be home.
Eventually all things merge into one.
And a river runs through it.
Gently now.
Return to Sankalpa.
Your sankalpa has been resting here with you throughout this whole journey.
Allow it to rise again.
The way you would recognize the face of your beloved in a crowd.
Without effort.
With comfort.
Let the words move below the throat,
Into the chest,
The belly,
The bones,
The body as a whole,
Receiving that which it already knows.
Repeat your sankalpa silently to yourself.
Three times.
Very slowly now.
The edges of the room are coming back.
Become aware of the breath,
Mid-flow,
Already happening.
Become aware of the body as a whole,
Its outline,
Its weight,
Its particular warmth.
Notice sounds from outside and within.
The quality of light behind the eyelids.
Allow the fingers to begin as small movements,
Almost imperceptible.
Than the toes,
A breath that goes a little deeper.
A long releasing exhale.
When the time feels right,
Draw the knees gently toward the chest,
Roll slowly onto one side,
Whichever calls you,
And rest here in a curl,
Small or large.
Held.
Completely held.
Take as much time as this moment deserves.
And when the body is ready at its own pace,
In its own time,
Allow it to bring you up to seated.
And take a moment to simply notice just what is here now.
A looseness in the jaw perhaps,
A breath that asks for less effort,
Slight softening in the fabric of the chest.
Your nervous system has been listening to every moment of this practice.
It is profoundly responsive,
Far more so than we tend to believe.
Regulation is not something that takes years to arrive.
It arrives in moments.
Small,
Repeated,
Genuine moments of felt safety,
Offered consistently,
Without performance or pressure.
You are that.
This practice is that.
And return whenever you need.
There is no minimum requirement,
No correct frequency.
Only the understanding that this kind of returning to the body,
To the breath,
To the intelligence that has been keeping you here all along is always available.
It is always here.
And the nervous system always listens.
This practice of Yoga Nidra is now complete.
Shine bright.
Shine bold.
Shine in love.
Thank you so much for taking the time to practice with me today.
