Yoga Nidra For Sleep | British Female Voice

If you're having problems sleeping, then this practice could be for you!

The recording lasts 3 hours with a full 40-minute Yoga Nidra practice to guide you beneath the noise of the thinking mind - into the body, the breath, and the place where genuine rest lives.

Through a complete body scan, Sankalpa, and pairs of opposites, you are gently guided into the deepest state of conscious rest. And when the practice ends, gentle sleep music continues to carry you through to sleep.

You don't need to do anything. You don't need to get anything right. Simply lay down, close your eyes, and let go.
Your nervous system knows how to rest. This practice simply reminds it.

Transcript

So welcome to today's practice of yoga nidra. Take a moment now to make any final adjustments to your position. Lying down, Allow your feet to fall gently outward. Let your arms rest a little away from your body, Palms facing upward if that feels comfortable. Soften your belly, Your shoulders, Your jaw and your face. And when you feel settled, Allow your eyes to close or soften your gaze, Inviting your focus and your attention inside. And begin to simply notice that you are here, Here in this moment, In this body, In this breath, In this moment. Take a long, Deep inhale through your nose and sigh it out through your mouth, Letting yourself sink into your body, Into this moment, Letting go of everything else. Allow everything to rest outside for this time. Allow yourself to rest within. You are exactly where you need to be. There is nothing you need to hear, Nothing to achieve, Nothing to fix or get right. All you need to do is be aware of your breath. And in that awareness, Something begins to shift. The busy mind starts to quieten. The body recognizes that it is safe, That it can rest. Take a few more breaths here in your own time, Extending the exhale a little longer, Arriving a little more fuller with each inhale. In today's practice, We are going to explore the idea, The understanding rooted in both ancient wisdom and modern science, That the reality we experience is shaped not by what we think, But by what we feel and embody at the deepest level, Essentially our own frequency. Most attempts to change our lives happen at the surface, Through effort, Willpower and positive thinking. But the beliefs and patterns that actually run us live far below conscious awareness, In the body and the nervous system. Yoga Nidra offers us a way in. Through its systematic practice, Yoga Nidra guides beneath the noise of the thinking mind to the place where real change can take root. All you need to do is lie down, Stay awake and be still, And allow the practice to unfold. Notice the points of contact between your body and the surface beneath you, The back of your head, Your shoulders, The length of your spine, The backs of your arms and your hands, The backs of your legs, Your heels. Feel the weight of your body being held, Held and supported. Breathe into this, Let go to this. Imagine every sense as a fine thread, Running outward from you into the world, Carrying everything back, The sounds, The lights behind your eyelids, All the sensations. One by one, Let these threads go slack, Not cut, Simply released, Floating free. And in the quiet that follows, Feel what remains. When the world's frequency falls away, What is that quiet hum that has always been there before the noise began? This is what we have come here to find. I now invite you to make your sankalpa, Your heart's intention, The seed you are planting, The frequency you are looking to match. For this practice, You might like to bring your sankalpa in as a feeling rather than a phrase, A feeling of the reality or the experience you are choosing to awaken, To tune into. And remember with sankalpa, We are not looking for anything that does not already exist within. You are already whole, Already complete, Already enough, Exactly as you are. Life has a way of teaching us differently. Experiences we carry from childhood, From relationships, From years of being told in one way or another that we needed to be different, Do more, Become something other than we already were. And all that leaves a residue, A kind of forgetting. Yoganidra uncovers this untruth. It reminds, It brings you back gently, Steadily to what was already there beneath the noise, Complete. And your sankalpa is the intuitive commitment that aligns with your authentic self. Honoring a purpose that is already within, That has perhaps always been within. So bring your sankalpa in now. Feel your sankalpa to wholeness. Let it be a remembering, A felt sense that has always been yours. A sense of coming home and plant it here, Not as words today, But as a feeling in your body. In the space that follows, Embody your sankalpa. Cast your mind back now to that quiet hum. As we move through the body together, I'm going to invite you to carry that feeling, That quiet hum with you, Like a warm light moving gently from point to point. We begin with the right hand, The right hand thumb. Let this feeling land, The faintest warmth, The quietest hum of aliveness, Of pulsing frequency. Your first finger, Second finger, Third finger and little finger. The palm of your right hand, The back of your hand, The wrist, Lower arm, Elbow, Upper arm, Right shoulder, Armpit, The right waist, Hip, The right thigh, Kneecap, Calf, Ankle, Heel, Sole of the right foot, Top of the foot, Your right big toe, Second toe, Third toe, Fourth toe and little toe. The whole of the right side of your body, Humming, Pulsing with sensation. Now to the left hand, The left hand thumb, First finger, Second finger, Third finger and little finger. The palm of your left hand, The back of your hand, The wrist, Lower arm, Elbow, Upper arm, Your left shoulder, Armpit, Left waist, Left hip, Thigh, Kneecap, Calf, Ankle, Heel, The sole of your left foot, Top of foot, Your left big toe, Second toe, Third toe, Fourth toe and little toe. The whole of the left side of your body. Now to the back of your body, Right shoulder blade, Left shoulder blade, Right glute, Left glute, Your spine, All the way from the tailbone to the base of the skull. That long central column carrying the frequency of your whole nervous system. The whole of the back of your body, Together, Held, Supported, At rest. Now to the top of your head, The crown of your head, Feel the frequency settle here. Now over to your forehead, Smooth, Wide and open, Right temple, Left temple, Right eyebrow, Left eyebrow and the space between your eyebrows, That quiet place of knowing. Right eyelid, Left eyelid, Right eye, Left eye, Soft, Resting, Receiving, Right ear, Left ear, Left ear, Right cheek, Left cheek, The nose, The tip of the nose, Upper lip, Lower lip, Your tongue, Your teeth, Your jaw, The whole of your mouth, Gentle and soft, Your throat. Now to the front of your body, The whole of the right side of your chest, The whole of the left side of your chest, The middle of your chest, Your heart center. Let frequency settle here for a moment, Right at the heart, Where Sankalpa lives. Breathe here, Your navel, Your belly, Your abdomen, The whole of the front of your body, Rising and falling with each breath, The whole of your body together, The whole of your right leg, The whole of your left leg, Both legs together, The whole of your right arm, The whole of your left arm, Both arms together, The whole of your back, Glutes, Spine, Shoulder blades, The whole of your front, Abdomen, Chest, The whole of your head, Your whole body together, Your whole body together. Your whole body together as one field, One frequency. Complete. Notice what it feels like to inhabit the whole of yourself at once. A whole living, Vibrating field of awareness, Just as you are. Now bring your attention gently to your breath, Witnessing as your breath moves through you. Notice the breath arriving, The gentle rise of your chest or your belly, The slight pause at the top of the inhale, And then the release, The slow return, The pause at the end of the exhale before the next breath begins. As you breathe, Begin to notice every breath is a wave, It has a frequency, A rhythm entirely its own. This rhythm has been here all your life, Before you had any words, Before you had any thoughts or plans or worries, This rhythm was already here. Steady, Faithful, Constant, Your breath. It simply is like you simply are. Imagine now that with each exhale, You are releasing something, Allowing whatever has been held, Whatever has been carried to soften and dissolve for on the out-breath, Those last bits of tension, The last bits of effort in your body, The weight of other people's energy pressing against your own. Exhale it, Let it go, It was never yours to keep. And with each inhale, Imagine you were drawing in clarity, Space, The quiet unique frequency of who you are beneath the noise, Who you are at your most still, Your most true, Your authentic self. You have been re-tuning inward, Perhaps notice who is doing the tuning behind the breath, Behind the senses or thoughts that drift like weather. There is something that simply knows, That registers, That is present without effort or intention. This is the witness, The frequency beneath all frequencies, It simply is. Feel your body really becoming heavy now, Allow a feeling of heaviness to enter your body. Let the weight of your body sink downwards, The back of the head heavy against the ground, Your shoulders heavy, Your arms heavy, Your hands heavy, Your legs heavy, Your feet heavy. Feel the pull of gravity on every part of you, Sinking, Settling. And now the opposite, Feel your body becoming light, Almost weightless, Your arms feel light, Your legs feel light, Your hands and your feet feel light, As though they may float upward of their own accord, A lightness through your chest, Through your whole body, Buoyant, Effortless. Sinking again, Feel dense, Grounded, Heavy, Now weightless, Free. Draw inward now, Feel the body pulling in on itself, A sense of the chest closing, The shoulders curling forward, The belly drawing in. Feel the smallness of it, The sense of being compressed, Contracted, As though something in you is trying to take up less space, To be less, To stay hidden. Feel this in your body. And then open, Soften, Let the chest rise and widen, Let the shoulders fall back and apart, Let the belly release out with the breath, Feel the body taking up exactly the space it is meant to take up, No more, No less. This is expansion, This is what it feels like to inhabit yourself completely. And as you rest in this expansion, Notice that this is a frequency, This open, Unhurried, Full-bodied presence. This is what you are, Breathe into the fullness of yourself. Let this expansion stay, You are safe to be this open, This whole. Heavy and light, Contracted and expanded, Let them dissolve back into each other, Two waves, One ocean. Beneath the opposites, There is something that never changed, Something that holds it all, The one frequency beneath all frequencies, The silence inside every sound. I'm going to offer you a series of images now, Move quickly from one to the next. Let your imagination move the way water moves, Finding its way without force, Without knowing where it will go, Trusting the flow. Imagine a still lake at sunrise, A single candle flame, A tuning fork ringing, Your own hands open, A wave meeting the shore, A seed in the dark, Quiet earth, A compass finding north, The moment just before the dawn, The stillness within, Your heart open and wide, And now let go, Until there is only this, This, This, This. As Rumi says, We carry inside us the wonders we seek outside us, So rest now in all the wonders that lie within, In all there is. And now, Once more, Your sankalpa, Come back to the feeling you planted at the beginning of practice, Not as a memory, As a living thing, Present, Breathing, That felt sense of the reality you are choosing, That quiet frequency of who you most deeply are, And offer it three times now, Within your body, Not as words, As a feeling, As a knowing. And remember, A sankalpa is not only planted in stillness, It is lived, It asks something of you, Not as effort, Not as striving, But as a quality of attention, To recognize in a small moment of kindness, This. This is the frequency you chose to plant here, And every time you respond to your sankalpa, Every time you honor it in the texture of your daily life, You are not just thinking about change, You are change. In the quiet moments when no one is watching and you choose anyway to be the truest version of yourself, This is how the inner becomes the outer. This is how the frequency you hold inside begins to shape what you find outside. And most important, Trust that your sankalpa has been received by every cell of your body. Now you are being invited to meet it.