Nurturance Yoga Nidra

This yoga nidra practice will guide you to tenderly and deeply rest and move into an open state to receive nurturance for your whole being through invoking the imagery and felt sense of the earth and of being held.

Sankalpa is an optional part of this practice.

Transcript

Take the time here to lovingly and tenderly arrange your body for your practice.

Make whatever adjustments are necessary to the propping that you have chosen so the body feels able to release itself symmetrically,

Evenly and completely into being held.

And then turn your attention toward your breath.

And as you observe your breath,

Let it be a gentle but insistent invitation to gather your attention here and now to call your energy home to yourself,

To call your attention home to yourself,

To call your awareness home to yourself,

To answer the call to reclaim your rest.

From the crown of your head across the front line of your body,

Feel yourself soften and grow heavier,

Letting the front body blanket the back body down into the embrace of the earth underneath.

And as your attention finds its way down towards the soles of your feet,

Let it wrap around to the back line of your body,

Inviting it to soften and melt into that embrace.

Let your attention comb through your body now,

Deciphering any places where there remains gripping or holding retention.

Gently direct the breath towards each one of those places that you find.

Sense the breath wrapping around them,

Flowing over them like water over stone,

Slowly softening and melting those edges away,

Un-knitting attention,

Letting your body begin to rest even as your awareness becomes more wakeful.

And it is here into this softened state that we begin the practice of yoga nidra.

As you feel into this softened state that you have cultivated for yourself so tenderly,

Take a moment here to truly appreciate the grace of that gift that you're giving yourself.

That it is no small thing to choose yourself in this moment,

To choose your rest in this moment.

That it is a loving and often revolutionary act that you are so worthy of.

To allow yourself to feel the appreciation and the gratitude bubbling up from within yourself for exactly that.

Let that gratitude start to move in waves,

Washing over this body,

Carried by your breath,

Letting each and every one of yourself flowing over into the spaces of your mind and both the emotional and spiritual heart and into this sense of gratitude.

You begin to seed your sankalpa,

This statement affirming and choosing to align yourself with the quality or a value that you wish to inhabit.

Remaining with I or I am,

You plant like seeds three times silently in your mind into the well of this gratitude now.

Release them into that field of gratitude and allow them to be tucked away in it,

Held in it as your attention journeys deeper into your body now.

Beginning first at the periphery,

Feel the soles of your feet,

Your big toe on your left,

Your second toe,

Third toe,

Fourth toe,

And fifth toe.

Your left heel,

The top of your left foot,

Your right foot,

Big toe,

Second toe,

Third toe,

Fourth toe,

Fifth toe,

Your right heel,

The top of your right foot.

Feel both hands,

The palm of your left hand,

Your left thumb,

Index finger,

Middle finger,

Ring finger,

And pinky finger,

The back of your left hand,

Your right palm,

Right thumb,

Index finger,

Middle finger,

Ring finger,

Pinky finger,

The back of your right hand,

Both feet,

Both hands,

Your wrists and ankles,

Your shin bones in the backs of your calves,

Inner and outer edges of the forearms,

Kneecaps and elbows,

Thighs,

Upper arms,

Both the left and right hip joints,

The left and right shoulder joints.

Feel the back of your pelvis and your sacrum,

The whole length of your spine,

The back of your skull,

Crown of your head,

Your forehead,

Eyebrows,

Eye sockets,

Cheekbones,

Tip of your nose,

Your lips,

Your chin,

The front of your throat,

Your collarbones in the front of your chest,

The casing of your ribs,

The sides of your waist,

Front of your belly,

The root of the pelvic floor,

Drawing inward,

You move from the root of the pelvic floor up into the bowl of the pelvis and feel the spaces of the organs and glands there.

You feel your digestive tract as you move upward through your belly.

Feel your lungs,

Your heart nested between them,

The inner aspect of your throat,

Your midbrain pineal and pituitary glands nested in your midbrain between the tips of your ears behind your closed eyes.

You feel your whole brain.

You connect to your whole body now.

Your whole body as one.

And within this soft and still body,

You feel the breath rising and falling like a wave,

The tide drawing in and tide releasing out.

And as you watch that circulate,

Feel the ripple of the breath moving beyond just the landscape of the lungs and diaphragm and belly,

But reaching out beyond it to the soles of the feet and upward to the crown of the head,

Reaching out to the periphery at the palms and the fingertips.

You feel the responsiveness of your body to your breath,

Where the whole body gently expands and widens as you inhale,

Whole body softens and contracts back towards center on your exhale.

Breath draws in and the body widens.

Breath clears out and the body softens back in.

Ebbing and flowing.

You start to follow that feeling of expansion and contraction more than even the physicality of the breath itself,

Sensing this pulsation of the life force that enlivens you.

Always expanding and contracting,

Always ebbing and flowing.

Always circulating between vibrant wakefulness and soft,

Deep rest.

And as you watch this ebb and flow evolving,

Let yourself follow the experience of expansion more and more fully.

Watch as your attention grows much wider than the space of your body and the space of the room that you are in,

Widening outward.

Follow it as it moves well beyond the confines of these four walls.

Feel your energy follow the current of expansion,

Widening outward,

Limitless in its capacity.

And when it reaches the edge of what you consider possible,

Give it room to move even wider yet again.

From that edge of expansion,

Softly now release.

Feel all of your attention,

Your energy,

Your awareness starting to arrive closer and closer until it comes down to a singular point right at the center of the space of your heart.

All your attention and awareness contracts into this minuscule point of light,

This concentrated point.

And then you release that end of the spectrum of polarity and you allow the ebb and flow to return,

The soft movement between both sides of expansion and contraction.

And you let yourself now sink below the threshold of thought into the conjuring power of the imaginal space.

You picture yourself landing in the most lush,

Warm,

Vibrant environment.

A soft breeze is gently moving across your skin.

The faint scent of some wild flower catches your attention.

Your feet feel rooted,

Deeply grounded.

And in that felt sense of your grounding,

You recall this place,

Like ancient memory,

Long forgotten and yet so familiar to you.

You feel yourself settle into this space,

This place of lush beauty with such ease and familiarity.

You feel deeply at home.

You begin to purposefully walk,

Exploring this vibrant ecosystem that surrounds you.

The soft grasses reaching for the sky,

The leafy growth of the trees around you,

The sounds of a body of water catching your attention.

And with a lightness in your step,

You follow the path that is rising up in front of you toward that body of water.

With each step that you take,

You grow more assured in your presence here.

Your remembrance of it grows deeper.

And so too,

It is the feeling of being held by this place,

Of being known by this place.

As you arrive at that body of water,

You seat yourself next to it,

Slowly and playfully dipping your toes in,

Submerging your feet in,

Letting that water begin to wash over you.

You run your fingers across its surface and you feel your body settle here,

Rooted even more deeply.

And with your feet and legs still connected to the water,

You lay your body back on the ground.

The day is turned skyward and you feel this body yield to the protection and the loving embrace of the earth underneath it.

And you allow yourself to rest into being held,

Loving the cradle here.

You sense your breath moving effortlessly.

This space takes over your entire being.

And you drift deeper and deeper into the felt sense of being so completely held until the environment itself starts to dissolve.

All that remains in your attention and awareness is the feeling of being held,

Being cradled and loved.

And as you continue to dwell in that space of being so tenderly cared for,

You begin to feel it commingled with the experience of gratitude again.

So grateful and appreciative for this time to be held,

This loving presence wrapped around you.

And through that gratitude,

You once again recall and reclaim your sankalpa again here three times now.

And with that last repetition,

Your breath starts to deepen,

Anchoring you back into the felt sense of this body here on this earth.

You begin to take a tiny little bit of movement gently,

Feeling the solidity,

The grounding of this body again.

Let that build into whatever other movements you need to call yourself back in and to ground yourself here before you turn yourself over onto your side.

Perhaps tucking your knees towards your chest,

Allowing yourself a last few moments of rest.

As the practice of yoga nidra is now complete,

Hari Om Tat Sat.

When you're ready,

You can release yourself from this position and rejoin the rest of your day.