So welcome,
Begin to make yourself comfortable.
Lying down on your back,
Settling into the shape of rest.
Let your legs relax and roll gently open.
Let the arms rest a little away from the body,
The palms turning upward.
A whole back of the body held by the floor.
And by the air.
Allow the eyes to softly close.
Take one long breath in,
And a slow breath out,
Letting something go with the exhale.
Another deep breath in.
Filling your body with fresh air.
And then let it go.
Sigh it out of the body.
Let everything go.
One last breath in,
Inviting space in.
And then release it with a long,
Surrendering sigh.
Let it all go.
And then gently seal the lips,
Inviting the breath to flow with ease in and out of your nose for the duration of this practice.
Bring your full attention and awareness inside now,
Into this body,
Into this moment.
There is nowhere else to be.
Nothing to fix.
Nothing to achieve.
For this short time,
The only invitation is to stay awake and aware as the body sleeps.
Make any last adjustments so the body need not move again for the duration of practice.
From here,
We enter stillness.
As the body settles,
Let me offer you something to carry through the practice.
Between whatever happens to us and how we answer it,
There is a space.
It can be very small,
But it is always there.
And in that space,
Live something that belongs entirely to you.
The freedom to choose your response.
That is all this practice is,
An invitation to practice the art of finding the pause.
There is always the potential to choose.
Even when it seems there is no choice at all.
When life has narrowed to almost nothing.
One freedom remains that cannot be taken away from us.
How we meet the moment.
It is a quiet power.
And it is yours.
Let the sense of hearing open now.
Wide and without effort.
You can simply allow sound to come to you.
Each sound comes.
Each sound goes.
You remain.
Now draw the attention inward to the sounds nearer the room.
And nearer still than all of them.
The sound of your own breath.
Now let the sense of touch open.
Become aware of every place the body meets the world where the body rests on the floor.
The weights of the body.
The air on the skin.
Your clothes or a blanket against you.
The small points of contact you had stopped noticing.
Now let the sense of touch draw inward.
From the surface of the skin.
To the sensations within.
Let the attention travel inward by your choosing,
From the outermost edge to the warmth at your center.
And now the sense of sight.
Though the eyes are closed and there is nothing to see.
Become aware of the darkness behind the islands.
Perhaps colour's there.
Or faint light.
We're only shadows.
Rest softly,
Without searching.
Let the eyes be still.
Now let the seeing turn inward,
Away from the outer eyes,
Toward the inner space,
The wide,
Dark room within you.
Choose to surrender.
Choose to rest.
In this quiet we plant Sankalpa.
A single short sentence,
Spoken silently,
Held in the present as though it were already true.
If a resolve already lives in your heart,
Welcome it now,
For you may take the following as an invitation for this practice.
Silently,
Gently,
And with feeling.
Repeat within yourself three times.
I am free to choose my response.
Let the resolve go now.
We have planned to do.
It will grow on its own.
In the dark.
As we continue deeper into practice.
We will now move the awareness through the body,
Part by part.
As I name each body part,
Simply take your attention there.
Not moving it.
Not tensing it.
Just being aware.
And then softly let it go.
There is no need to try,
Only follow the voice.
Remember,
This is the small practice.
At each place,
As awareness arrives,
Meet that part of the body not with any judgment,
But with a chosen kindness.
A quiet yes.
Let each part of your body be received.
Become aware of the right hand and the right hand thumb.
First Finger.
Second finger.
Bad finger.
And Littlefinger.
Palm of your right hand.
Back of the hand.
Rest.
Lower arm.
The elbow.
The upper arm.
The shoulder.
The armpit.
The right side of the waist.
The right tip.
The right thigh.
The Knee.
The car.
The ankle.
The Heal.
The sole of the right's foot.
The top of the foot.
The right big toe.
Second toe.
The Tote.
Fourth toe and little toe.
The hull of your right foot.
Now become aware of your left hand and your left hand thumb.
First finger.
Second finger.
Third finger and little finger.
The palm of the left hand.
Back of the hand.
The wrist.
The lower arm.
The elbow.
The upper arm.
The shoulder.
The armpit.
The left side of the way.
The left hip.
The left thigh.
Than me.
The car.
The ankle.
The heel.
The soul of the left foot.
The top of the foot.
The left big toe.
Second hope.
Virto.
Fourth toe and little toe.
The hole of the left foot.
Become aware of the whole of the back of the body.
The right shoulder blade.
The left shoulder blade.
The whole spine,
From its base to the neck.
Right glutes.
Left glute.
Your hair.
Your whole head.
Lying rested.
On the ground.
The entire back body.
Resting on the ground.
Now to the front of the body.
The crown of your head.
You're foreign.
Right eyebrow,
Left eyebrow,
And the space between your eyebrows.
Right eye.
Left eye.
Right temple.
Left temple.
Right ear.
Left ear.
Right cheek.
Left cheek.
Your nose.
The bridge of your nose to the very tip of your nose.
Top lift.
Bottom lip.
Both your lips together.
Your tea.
And your tongue.
Lying heavy in the base of your mouth.
Your jaw,
Loose,
Soft.
Your chin.
Your throat.
Your right collarbone and your left collarbone,
And the space between your collarbones.
The left side of your chest.
The right side of your chest.
Your whole chest.
Navel,
Abdomen,
Pelvis.
The whole of the right leg.
The whole of the left leg.
Both your legs together.
The whole of your right arm.
The whole of your left arm.
Both your arms together.
Your legs,
Your arms,
Your chest,
Your back,
Your head.
Your whole body.
Your whole body together.
Receive.
The whole body.
Lying.
In stillness.
At ease.
Let the awareness rest now on the natural breath.
Not changing it.
Just watching it come and go.
The breath.
Breathing itself.
Feel where the body meets the floor.
The heels.
The backs of the legs.
The back.
The arms.
The back of the head.
Feel how completely you are held.
You do not have to hold yourself.
The Earth.
Is there.
Let your weight be given fully.
To what holds you.
Receive the gift of being helped.
Now,
If it's comfortable.
Allow the breath to begin to lengthen and slow.
The in-breath long and smooth.
The outbreath,
Longer still.
And softer.
Slow like the tide.
With each breath in,
You might like to imagine you are drawing in light,
A cool,
Bright air that reaches everywhere.
Feel it travel inward.
All the way down to the smallest parts of you.
Picture in every part of the body.
Tiny wheels of light.
And each breath you draw feeds them,
Turns them.
Sets them,
Gently glowing.
The breath is flowing,
And the flow becomes light.
And the light becomes warm.
And the whole body.
Begins to shine quietly from the inside.
Cell by cell.
All this energy in your cells.
Being made fresh,
Continuously,
From this breath to the next and the next.
You're not running on the past.
You are not waiting for the future.
You are completely powered by the present.
And so it is with choice.
The power to meet your life is not somewhere ahead of you,
To be reached one day when things are calmer or easier.
It is made here.
In the only moment that is ever truly yours.
Not someday.
It's in the now.
The one place you have always been free.
The only place you can ever choose.
Is this one.
Here.
And there is the whole practice again.
In something as small as breath.
You do not command the tide.
You allow it.
Your body knows what to do.
Allow it.
Let it deepen.
And in letting it deepen.
Everything.
Softens.
Will now awaken two opposite feelings in turn,
And then hold on to both together.
This is an age-old power of the mind.
To summon a feeling.
And to know that we are larger than it.
First,
Gently recall a feeling of constriction,
A narrowing,
A tightness,
Perhaps a held breath,
A clenched hand.
Simply let a memory of that narrowness,
That constriction,
Color the body for just a moment.
And now let that dissolve completely.
In its place,
Invite the feeling of spaciousness,
Expansion,
A wide open sky.
An endless quiet feels.
The sea meeting the horizon.
The Body Wide.
The breath wine.
Let spaciousness fill you.
Expansion.
Now the deeper practice.
Hold these states of being together.
At the same time.
Construction.
And expansion.
Expansion.
And constriction.
Let both feelings go now,
And know that within you,
There is room for both.
Constriction and expansion.
You are not either one.
You are the space in which both appear and pass.
Whatever narrows can be met,
Whatever opens can be received.
You remain.
Rest as the one who holds them.
I will now name a stream of images.
Let each one appear and go,
And give way to the next,
Like scenes glimpsed from a moving train.
Simply watch them come and go.
Imagine in your mind's eye.
A candle flame.
A red rose.
A winding river.
A mountain at dawn.
An old wooden door.
A field of tall grass moving in the wind.
A single white feather.
A key in an open hand.
Bare feet on the cool earth.
A wide blue sky.
A road leading away toward the light.
The Rising Sun.
Let the images settle now,
Like dust returning to stillness.
The screen of the mind growing quiet.
And clear.
Let a single image form now and rest with this.
Imagine you are standing at a threshold.
In the last quiet before dawn.
Behind you,
The runes of the night.
Everything that has already happened.
Already been felt.
Already passed.
Before you the open doorway.
And beyond that.
The world not yet arrived.
You stand in the space between.
Neither behind.
Nor head.
Here on the threshold,
In the pause.
It is still dark.
You cannot choose or know when the light will come or what the day will carry toward you.
You can only be here.
At the edge.
And wait for what comes.
And then,
Faro.
The first light begins.
The faintest warmth of colour.
You did not summon this.
You did not make the sun rise.
And yet here it comes,
On its own,
As it always has,
As it always will.
The light reaching slowly toward you across the threshold.
And notice.
This dawn is not yesterday's,
And it is not tomorrow's.
There is only ever this one,
Arriving now,
As every dawn does,
As every breath does,
As every choice does.
And here,
Here is the space that is always yours.
You can choose how you meet this light.
You can turn away from it,
Back into the runes of the night.
The old ways of being.
Repeated patterns and projections.
Or you can open to it.
Present.
In this moment.
And allow it into your heart.
Know that whatever the day brings across this threshold,
Whatever arrives,
You can meet each new thing here in the same new way.
Not by controlling what comes,
But by choosing again and again how you stand to receive it.
This is the one freedom the dawn cannot take.
And cannot give.
Because it was always yours.
This is the gift of your life.
You choose.
Now we let everything fall away.
No image.
No effort.
No technique.
Not even the watching.
Here is only awareness itself.
The one who has been present through it all.
Through the sounds,
The body,
The breath,
The images.
The witness that was never disturbed,
But was above it all.
This awareness is what you most deeply are.
Rest as this.
Simply this.
Surrender the whole of yourself.
Rest as this.
Very gently,
Let your sankalpa return,
The one you planted at the beginning of practice.
It has been growing quietly in the dark all this time.
Now let it rise.
Let it bloom.
Let it blossom in body,
Mind,
And soul.
Silently,
Slowly,
Three times,
With all the feeling of something already true.
I am free to choose my response.
Feel that quiet power,
That gift.
You hold everything you need within.
And there is an ancient truth beneath this,
That what we plant in the depths becomes the shape of a life.
As written in the Upanishads,
You are what your deep,
Driving desire is.
As your desire is,
So is your will.
As your will is,
So is your deed.
As your deed is,
So is your destiny.
Your resolve is planted now,
In deep ground.
Trust that it will grow.
We begin now slowly to return.
There is no hurry.
Let the world come back to you rather than reaching for it.
Become aware once more of the breath.
Of its natural rhythm coming and going on its own.
Become aware of the body lying here on the floor,
On the ground,
On the earth.
Feel its weight,
Its warmth.
The shape of it.
The point where the body meets the ground.
Become aware again of the room around you,
Its size,
Its air,
Its light beyond your closed eyes.
Become aware of sounds near and far,
The ordinary world going on and waiting for you kindly.
As you return,
Carry one thing with you.
Not the words,
Not the images,
Only this.
That in every moment of the day ahead,
Whatever arrives at your door,
There is a space.
And in that space,
Something is always yours.
Even when it seems there is nothing,
There is this.
You are the one who stands at your threshold.
You are the one who chooses how to meet it.
Meet what comes.
Begin to deepen your breath.
That small movements return to your body.
The fingers,
The toes,
A gentle stretch if it calls to you.
Move in whatever way the body wishes,
Waking slowly.
You might like to roll gently onto your side and just rest there for a moment,
Curled and easy.
And when you're ready,
Only when you're ready,
Let the eyes softly open and bring yourself up to a seated position.
Take a breath here in this ordinary,
Extraordinary moment that you have chosen to arrive in.
Welcome back.
This practice of Yoga Nidra is now complete.
Thank you so much for choosing to take your time and practice with me today.
I wish you a wonderful rest of your day or evening ahead.
