I've always been fascinated by stories.
They have the capacity to both entrap and emancipate and I believe everybody deserves to live free.
Human lives are woven together through stories and have been since the dawn of language.
Our species loves to decode and navigate life through stories and that includes the stories we tell about ourselves and our lives.
Stories are powerful.
They have the capacity to hold us hostage but they can also set us free.
Some stories are crying out to be heard whilst some are longing to be let go.
The stories are so much more than baggage they are medicine.
They're salve in our shadows,
Ointment in our attics and power in our pain.
There are times when we need our stories to validate our feelings.
Times when our narratives guide us to meet the emotions trapped beneath the surface.
Stories form the banks of the river guiding the raging waters of emotion into rivers of meaning and pools of understanding.
An important part of the process is that of sharing our experience,
Giving voice to that which we have endured,
Overcome and survived.
Wearing our experience as a badge,
Celebrating who we have become because of where we have been.
But there comes a time when we begin to outgrow our stories and they become more constricting than cathartic.
There comes a time when we must step away from who we have been so that we can become who we might be because we are not the banks of the river but the water that flows freely through from the source to ocean surrendered to the flow.
As we shed skins that have become too tight we step into a new narrative and enter into a continual process of becoming.
So as ever taking as much time as you need to get comfortable and settled with absolutely no rush and no hurry.
And you might yawn and sigh,
Stretch and move until you very naturally find stillness or as close to stillness as is available to you today.
And as you do taking time to remember what drew you here.
Inviting this practice to be whatever you need it to be today.
Taking what works,
Leaving anything that doesn't.
Inviting the words to drift in and out of your awareness.
Acting as just a signpost to your own inner experience.
Knowing that there is nothing for you to do during this practice and therefore no way for you to do it wrong.
And that this practice can be experienced in a multitude of different ways depending on your nature,
Constitution,
Mood,
Energy levels and what is happening in your life right now.
So trying as far as possible to arrive into this practice with an attitude of no expectation,
No preference.
As though you were experiencing the stages for the very first time.
Trying to move beyond judgments of good and bad and welcoming everything that you experience as valid,
Normal and worthy of investigation.
Emotions as messengers guiding you back home to yourself.
Arriving into this practice of Yoganidra with an open heart and an open mind.
Free from judgment or preference or expectation.
Like a blank page ready to be written.
A blank canvas ready to be painted.
A single thread ready to be woven into the tapestry.
Inviting your bones to drop and your stories to follow.
Handing over the weight of your body and the weight of identity.
Surrendering to the weightlessness of simply being.
Releasing thoughts of what has been or what is to come.
Surrendering to the ever-present flow of this very present moment.
Your muscles releasing their grip on bones.
Your mind releasing its grip on thoughts.
And inviting your mind to gradually settle towards space,
Stillness and quiet.
Releasing the eyes to rest from the need to see and to know.
Feeling the eyes soften into the spaces behind the eyes.
Bathing in the healing darkness.
Releasing the face from the need to hold expression.
The whole face soft and neutral.
The kind of expression you might have in the deepest of sleep.
Releasing any unspoken words for now.
Softening the mouth,
The jaws,
The tongue,
The throat.
The shoulders unburdened by the weight of expectation.
Releasing softly towards the earth.
And as the shoulders rest down feeling the chest grow more spacious and open.
The breath massaging the heart.
Awareness pouring from thinking into feeling.
Pooling into the heart space.
Each breath becoming more and more embodied.
Leaving behind disconnection.
Welcoming your feeling nature.
The breath softening the belly with its rise and release.
The weight of the legs inviting and ungripping of the hips.
The natural weight and heaviness of the pelvis connecting you more fully to the earth beneath you.
Hands released from any need to do.
And feet released from any need to move.
The whole entire body invited to rest.
Dropping deeper and deeper into being.
And the sense doors flung wide open to the air.
The whole body feeling and perceiving.
Hearing and receiving.
Alive and connected.
And that connection to the world around you.
Deepening connection to your internal world.
The wisdom of the body speaking to you through sensation and feelings.
Visions and hunches.
Inner knowings.
Inviting this practice to be a space to connect to who you truly are.
Beyond what life has made you.
Noticing if you have a desire to work with a sankalpa for this practice.
An intention.
And this might be an inspiring affirmation,
A loving reminder,
Or an intention that guides you towards your heartfelt mission for this life.
Whatever it is that feels most natural and supportive in this moment.
Taking some space here to listen inwardly and invite your sankalpa to come to you in part,
In full,
Or perhaps as a glimpse or a glimmer to be followed and uncovered over time.
Breathing,
Being,
Open to receiving.
And then repeating your sankalpa to yourself wholeheartedly.
Bringing it to life with the images and emotions and feelings.
And then pouring your sankalpa into the pool of your practice,
Trusting in the flow,
And trusting in its continual evolution and natural unfolding.
And then taking a moment to connect to your heart and to invite in a renewing emotion.
Perhaps kindness,
Love,
Care,
Affection,
Peace.
Whatever feels supportive in this moment.
An opportunity to create a cave of contentment and security to which you might return in any moment during this practice or in daily life.
Your inner resource.
And sometimes emotions and feelings arise with ease.
Other times it might be useful to lean on a memory,
A felt sense,
Or an imagining of a time or a place when you felt this emotion,
This feeling.
And then the image brings the emotion.
Bathing in renewal as you cultivate your inner resource.
And if a renewing emotion or inner resource is not available or difficult to find today,
Is it possible to discover neutrality?
And then releasing any images leaving behind the residue of sensation.
And with this as your foundation beginning to travel awareness around the body now,
Part by part,
Like a massage of awareness.
A clearing of neural pathways.
A reconnection between body and mind.
Beginning by sensing and feeling into the right hand thumb.
The sensation of the right hand thumb.
And the index finger,
Middle finger,
Ring finger,
Little finger.
Thumb and fingers together.
In the palm of the hand,
Back of the hand,
Wrist.
Forearm,
Elbow,
Upper arm,
Shoulder,
Armpit,
Side,
Waist,
And hip.
The front of the right thigh and the back of the thigh.
Knee in the space at the back of the knee.
Chin,
Calf,
And ankle.
Heel,
Sole,
And ball of the right foot.
And the big toe,
Second toe,
Third toe,
Fourth toe,
And fifth.
And all of the toes together.
And the whole right side of the body from the inside out permeated with awareness.
Coming to sense and feel into the left hand thumb.
The sensation of the left hand thumb and the index finger,
Middle finger,
Ring finger,
Little finger.
Thumb and fingers together.
Palm of the hand,
Back of the hand,
Wrist,
Forearm,
Elbow,
Upper arm,
Shoulder,
Armpit,
Side,
Waist,
And hip.
Front of the left thigh and the back of the thigh.
Knee in the space at the back of the knee.
Chin,
Calf,
And ankle.
Heel,
Sole,
And ball of the left foot.
And the big toe,
Second toe,
Third toe,
Fourth toe,
And fifth.
And all of the toes together.
And the whole of the left side of the body from the inside out.
The whole of the right arm,
The whole of the left arm,
Both arms at the same time.
The sensation of both arms together.
The whole of the right leg and the whole of the left leg,
Both legs at the same time.
The sensation of both legs together.
And the whole of the back of the body.
Backs of heels,
Calves,
Knees,
Thighs,
And the back of the pelvis.
The full length of the spine,
The muscles that surround.
From the tip of the tailbone to the sacrum,
Decompressing here.
To the inward curve of the lower back,
Outward curve of the upper back,
Inward curve of the neck,
Outward curve of the head,
Crown of the head,
Radiating,
Shimmering,
A field of sensation.
The forehead,
Soft,
Spacious.
Space between eyebrows broadening.
Both eyes releasing,
Cheeks,
Jaws,
Hinge of the jaws,
Teeth,
Gums,
Tongue.
From the tip of the tongue to the root of the tongue,
To the soft hollow of the throat.
The valley between the collar bones,
The heart space,
The deep heart's core.
Softening from the inside out.
The diaphragm releasing,
Solar plexus softening.
Navel,
Lower belly rippling with the breath.
Hips,
Knees,
Ankles,
And feet.
The whole of the body,
A radiant field of shimmering sensation.
The whole of the body together,
Inside,
Outside,
To the left,
The right,
Through the back,
And out the front.
Feeling the weight and the heaviness of the body as you sink ever deeper to the earth that is holding you.
Each exhalation dropping deeper and deeper down.
The whole body at ease.
And ease might give way to effortlessness and the feeling of lightness.
Evaporating,
Expanding,
Elevating,
Opening.
Each inhalation lifting you a little higher.
Heart lifted,
Mind expanding.
The earth below and the experience of gravity.
In the sky above and the feeling of levity.
And your body resting held in between.
Neither heavy nor light and yet somehow both at the same time.
Sensing the constriction of old stories and the gripping of your body.
Noticing how it is to be held within that which no longer fits.
And then the releasing,
The shedding of that skin as you expand into your fullness,
Into the space around you.
Noticing how it is to be free from form.
Breathing softly,
Rhythmically,
Naturally.
Resting into the freedom of simply being without story or narrative,
Identity or need to know.
Drifting without direction downstream into a deep and healing rest.
The whole body dissolving into a deep rest.
And then finding yourself at a door.
The threshold between who you are now,
Who you have been and who you might become.
Standing there with your baggage,
Your experience,
Your stories told and untold.
Your identities,
Roles,
Beliefs,
Shadows.
And what do you want to put down?
What are you ready to leave behind?
And when you feel ready,
Opening the door,
Stepping through,
Feeling old skins falling away,
Seeing your new world before you with fresh eyes.
Gazing in wonder and awe at all that lie ahead.
No longer the banks but the free-flowing river floating into a new narrative and a continually evolving process of becoming.
Resting in the simplicity of being and the liminal space between no longer and not yet.
And then returning to your experience of yourself in this moment here and now to this breath.
Noticing how it feels to melt the boundaries of being and merge into an interconnected whole.
To feel that you are the observer of all that is unfolding within you.
That you are awareness like the air everywhere and nowhere at the same time.
You may return to your sankalpa if you were working with one today.
Noticing any transformations or changes here.
An invitation to reaffirm your sankalpa to yourself.
To exit on your heart in semi-permanent marker.
Less of a contract,
More of an open-ended commitment to live in harmony with your heart.
A permeable promise to stay connected.
And as you begin to drift from the state of your Ganyidra back into everyday awareness.
Feeling that you are floating into this next chapter without the stories that have carried you this far.
Resting in the peace of not knowing.
Without thinking.
Simply sensing and feeling your way.
Less certain,
More curious.
Less fixed,
More fluid.
Less worried,
More trusting.
Open to the wonder of it all and surrendered to all that is and isn't.
With as much grace as you can muster.
And coming around in your very own time in your very own way.
Lingering here for as long as you feel too.
