Imbolc Yoga Nidra

Imbolc heralds the beginning of Spring- rebirth, reawakening, regeneration and fertility and is the subtle surge of wakefulness that pervades the sleep of winter. This practice invites us to align with Ireland's holy wells- some of the oldest sacred sites and symbols of life, death, healing, fertility and faith.

Transcript

Welcome to our Celtic Wheel Nidra practice.

This is the living stream,

A practice for restful aliveness.

This Nidra practice will usher your body,

Mind and spirit back into the natural flow state,

Connecting you to a fluid current of phunyv,

Source energy and multiple becomings.

Engage in your own little personal pre-Nidra ritual now,

Whatever that might look like for you.

Maybe it's pulling a firm pillow to cradle you from underneath the knees,

Or a blanket enveloping your whole form,

Maybe an eye pillow,

Starting to filter out distractions and settle in.

This is you time.

When you feel ready,

Glide your shoulder blades a little bit closer to the river of your spine and downward for an expression of opening across the chest.

And now take a generous inhale into the shape that you've created,

And at the opening of your lungs,

Hold the top of your inhale and keep the back of your throat open.

Float at the top of this inhale for a moment,

And when you exhale,

Do so so slowly that your breath embodies the pull of gravity downward.

Two more like this,

Inhaling,

Connecting to your shoulder blades,

Creating space for your front body to expand and holding at the top.

And exhaling,

Connecting to the shoulder blades,

Embodying the deceleration of your nervous system.

Last one,

Breathing in levity in the front body,

And exhaling gravity in the back body.

This practice can be done in any position you wish,

However if it feels genuinely comfortable for you and natural,

I invite you to cradle the contents of your low belly with your hands and fingers.

And move very gently and intentionally to position your hands,

Mapping the landscape of flesh,

History and animation in these two spaces as they unite.

Open,

Aware and awake to yourself and the field of sensations in your hands and belly now,

Alive in your hands,

Alive in the belly,

The stirrings of creation streaming from your hands to your belly and your belly to your hands.

Hand yourself over to the fluid realm of direct experience of your body.

Not thinking about the body,

Instead plunging yourself into the sensuous depths of fluid aliveness in your hands and belly.

The Irish Tubber Ná Dúrtha or natural spring holy well is one of the most sacred sites in the fluid breathing terrain that sustains us.

Working with the energy of the well,

You step into your ancestors footprints and into the living stream of life that connects you to animals,

Plants,

Mountains,

Rivers,

Winds and weather patterns.

To acknowledge your life as a living stream is to touch our larger,

Wider body and all that is.

To rest deeply in this living stream is to become a conduit for imbás or esoteric knowledge,

Carrying it from the underworld to the physical plane.

Thaamit Bhyo,

We are alive.

Can you fall into a state of complete trust in that knowledge?

Thaamit Bhyo,

We are alive.

The practice of yoga nidra begins as we drop into the bīja or seed sound vām three times,

Bringing this sound into your belly and your watery sacral area.

Whether you choose to voice the sound or not,

Bring it into your belly and allow it to wash this energy centre of creativity,

Pleasure and sexuality.

When you're ready,

Inhale deeply into the belly.

Vā Stepping into the way of water,

Your life flows through cracks and swirls around obstacles.

This is the energy of the well becoming the stream,

Becoming the river,

Becoming the sea.

Exploring,

Not seeking answers,

Just flowing,

Always flowing.

Your body is wild.

Feel into some of the universal responses from this mammal body as you start to drop down into a state of deeper relaxation.

Become more mindful of the air you breathe as it streams through your nostrils,

Filling and swelling your chest and belly before you exhale.

Notice that your exhaled breath is now blending with the air currents around you.

Shift into an awareness of the atmosphere,

A living membrane,

Quietly generated by all of us,

Ceaselessly exchanging our one breath.

Feel yourself generate and replenish the atmosphere,

The very medium that life needs to live,

Just by resting here.

Interbreathing with the plants in your home,

The hedges and trees and grasses nearby,

Metabolizing breathing beings and breathing in the products of their photosynthetic metabolism with a silent thank you.

Collect your attention in your hands again and start to notice the spaces where your aliveness is masked by tension in your body.

Soften in these spaces.

Resting,

Held and supported by life,

Lying back on the sturdiness of source,

The ground beneath you aiding in your restful aliveness.

Let your intention for this practice flow through in the form of a sankalpa if you work with one now,

Forming words around your intention,

Your I am statement,

With a sincerity and an innocence,

Calling in whatever really matters to you.

Aware of your breath,

Your senses awake,

Quality of here-ness becoming more accessible as you pay more attention.

Inhabiting the play of sensations.

Bring all of your awareness to the space between your brows.

From here travel back inside the midbrain,

Sensing the static vibrational aliveness in your inner brain without thinking.

A felt awareness of the white noise expanding to the inside lining of your skull.

Feeling the mass of your brain and living expression of electricity moving through your head.

Follow this electrical flow as your forebrain emerges into the cells of your eyeballs.

Tune into subtle eye movement,

Pupil dynamics and the colors,

Shapes and textures of your inner gaze.

Feeling and watching what's occurring through colors,

Fractal patterns and shades of aliveness in your eyes.

And trace this electrical awareness down into your mouth,

The function of your taste buds,

The information and sensitivity of your tongue and lips,

The roof of your mouth,

Back of your throat.

Tracking your awareness down to your shoulders from the inside.

And now the inside of your chest lights up in your awareness.

Aliveness and electricity in the pulse of your heartbeat.

Down to the meridian resonance of each of your organs as you tune into the rhythm of your liver.

The unique song and frequency of your kidneys and your back body.

Your spleen,

Bladder,

Colon.

The sound vibrations of your digestive system.

The functions of filtration and regulation through the arteries of your essential organs.

Cascade of your endocrine system.

The music of the orchestra of systems in your body.

Sensing the stream of information moving through your nervous system back to your brain.

And from your brain to every single cell in your body.

And now bring your attention to the space between your eyebrows,

Your eyebrow center.

Keep your attention at this point and focus on the number one.

And now proceed through the remaining 60 points in your energetic body.

Bringing your awareness to the center of your throat.

Your right shoulder joint.

Right elbow joint.

Right wrist joint.

Tip of your right thumb.

Tip of your right index finger.

Tip of your right middle finger.

Tip of your right ring finger.

Tip of your right little finger.

Now come back to the right wrist joint.

Right elbow joint.

Right shoulder joint.

Bring your awareness to the center of your throat.

Now go across to the left shoulder joint.

The left elbow joint.

The left wrist joint.

Left thumb.

Tip of your left index finger.

Tip of your left middle finger.

Tip of your left ring finger.

Tip of the little finger on your left hand.

Back up to the left wrist joint.

Left elbow joint.

Left shoulder joint.

Bring your awareness to the center of your throat.

Now bring your awareness down between the center of your two breasts.

Across to your right nipple.

Then back to the center between your breasts.

Across to your left nipple.

And back to the center between your breasts.

Now bring your awareness down to your navel center.

Down into your pelvic center.

And across with your awareness to your right hip joint.

Down to your right knee joint.

Right ankle joint.

Now bring your awareness to the big toe of your right foot.

Second toe.

Middle toe.

Fourth toe.

Little toe on your right foot.

Now come up to your right ankle joint.

Right knee joint.

Right hip joint.

Back to the pelvic center.

Now cross to the left hip joint.

Left knee joint.

Left ankle joint.

Bring your awareness to the big toe on your left foot.

Second toe.

Middle toe.

Fourth toe.

Little toe on your left foot.

Now come up to the left ankle joint.

Left knee joint.

Left hip joint.

Back to the pelvic center.

Up to the navel center.

Further up to the heart center.

And bring your awareness back to your throat center.

Return to your eyebrow center.

And continue to breathe deeply.

Smoothly.

Evenly.

Without pause.

Breathing in.

And out.

Through your eyebrow center.

Interbreathing.

With all that is.

Generating and replenishing the Earth's atmosphere.

By your very presence.

Allowing this breath to pull you back in to the current of life.

Awareness streams from your brow center to the well of creativity in your reproductive organs.

Notice your breath wave moving along that line of energy.

The current of your breath connecting you to the living ocean of all that is.

Reciprocal.

Abundant.

Entangled.

Alive.

Your life merges with is this ocean of consciousness.

We'll journey now to tracing back your essence from this ocean to your most ancient origins.

Your essence,

A molecule of water returning now from the ocean to the river.

Meandering back upstream to the well spring and descending down into the source of the flow of your life.

From the fresh molecules of well water going down,

Down deeper through layers of soil.

Microbes Mycelia Ancestral bones Descending down,

Down through the outer crust.

The mantle.

Right down deeper into the hot healing pulsing heart at the earth center.

Feel your essence held healed and enlivened by the creative heart of all things.

Absorbing qualities of this pulsing heart.

What's her song?

What's her color?

Her rhythm cradles your own essence as you rest back here.

Are there whispers of guidance for you here?

Allow your essence to be assimilated into her beauty.

Get out of the way and allow yourself to merge with the heart of the planet.

Rest here.

Let go here.

Receive here.

When you've had enough time in the belly of earth you feel drawn back to her surface.

Ascending with any information you've gleaned through the layers of earth toward the light and song of the sun and moon.

Returning in the form of water through a sacred well.

Bubbling up with the essence of the earth's raw heart merging as your life pours forth from stream to river to the ocean of universal consciousness.

Carrying that essence,

That heat,

That healing creative and sexual expression into the pelvic bowl of your living form.

Sankalpa alive in the belly.

Your life flowing in the way of health.

Emerging into the physical through an opulent stretch from the belly to the periphery.

A deep belly breath.

A big sigh rolling over curling into the heat and healing to the guidance and remembrance of your most ancient origins.

And when you're ready pull yourself up to a seat keeping your eyes closed attuning back to your fluid nature as you step back into the stream of your life.

Thank you for taking this time.

Hari Om Tat Sat.

Namaste.

Reviews

Thank you, that was wonderful✨

Cathy, that was truly powerful. My intention was ‘I am worthy’. By the end of this practice, that intention felt like just the tip of the iceberg. I felt connected to my own sense of strength, power, innate ancestral knowing, and more that cannot be articulated with words.

Thank you for this powerful invitation to embody softness from a place of unwavering strength.

Blessed Imbolc to you. ♥️