Hello,
I'm Cathy French.
And this is a yoga nidra practice to harmonize your energy body.
With the rhythms of the Celtic wheel of the year.
You might like to have a small pillow underneath your head and I recommend draping a blanket up over your shoulders and down over your feet.
And settle into a feeling of containment but with the capacity to open and expand as well.
I highly recommend an eye pillow or some kind of covering for your eyes.
Even a sleeve will do.
And when the seams of your heavy eyelids finally meet,
Allow for a spilling over of your inner vision from conical and screen focused to one of more expansion and softness.
And call on a vision of a green summer landscape.
Full of natural patterns and forms.
We'll return here later.
Before we start to move down through the layers of consciousness,
Let's invite a luxurious stretch through the creature of the physical body.
Wriggle into your muscles,
Bones and connective tissue before slowly and gently drawing your hands onto your low belly into a downward angled diamond.
Your index fingers pointing and meeting on your pubic bone.
And your thumb tips touching below your navel.
And the other fingers lie soft and cradling the contents of your stomach.
And start to call on your breath as an anchor for presence.
Whenever you sense your mind pull you out of this moment,
Return to the ally of your breath to guide you back to the richness of now.
Take a moment to settle into the pose so that it feels like the most pleasurable possible container for you.
You don't have to concern yourself with linear time now.
I'm keeping the time for us,
So you can just surrender back into this container.
This story of human ascent narrates our species history as a kind of a triumphant rise from the cave to the stars.
Even spiritual ascent is sometimes viewed as a ladder from materiality to spirit.
But what if our destiny is not a sense of severance up and out from the ground of being?
What if,
Instead of rising above the ancient ways of our ancestors,
We could instead take our place in a river of continuity flowing backward and forward through time?
When we turn our collective attention toward regenerating and restoring our relationship to nature and to love,
We enrich our ancestral connections too.
Their worldview held an appreciation for the sacred connectedness of all things.
The men and women we come from understood their place in the divine order of the universe.
Our ancestors of blood,
Bone,
Land and spiritual lineage are here with us.
All the human consciousness that's ever existed is here to support us in this lifetime with our cultural and ecological healing.
When we're in right relationship to each other and to the ground beneath our feet.
We summon the solace and care of the ancestors whose bodies have returned to that ground.
The inner work we do to widen our sense of pleasure,
Awe and appreciation.
Imprints soul level changes that reverberate after we return to the soil.
Our life will echo long after our body dies.
When we're centrally aware of our surroundings,
We become participants in this ancestral network of intuition and appreciation.
Just like the sun in the Irish summer experience,
Our exposure to this light of life is short and unpredictable.
The Celtic people lived with the cosmic principles of the Sammas,
Light,
And Gammas,
Dark.
The light emanates from the ordered fire and sun above,
And the dark comes from the primordial deep waters of consciousness below.
This complementary duality oscillates in a wheel of continued existence.
This is the primary guiding concept of the Celtic worldview,
That nothing we experience isn't made of a mix of both samos,
Light,
And gheamos,
Dark.
Seen and unseen,
Life and death,
Order and chaos.
When the light comes we must give ourselves completely to it.
The poet W.
B.
Yeats describes this as plucking the golden apples of the sun.
This practice of participation is as simple as stopping to notice the sunrise or a ripe strawberry.
If we experience the color,
We're more likely to take notice of the texture.
Then the smell and the taste of the strawberry offers us an opportunity to soak up the intimacy,
Generosity and beauty of the present moment.
The Celtic Wheel gives us a map to harness new and ancient instructions for heart-centred living.
With this in mind,
Let's settle into a timeless space where infinite codes and frequencies await.
Start to deepen your breath down into your hands and let your exhalation focus on the contact points and energy circuits created by this relaxed rendering of the sacred yoni mudra on your belly.
In this position prana,
Life force,
Is directed to powerfully flow into your reproductive organs.
Feel the warmth of your hands nurture the energy of your belly beneath.
And here we honor the cosmic gateway of your creative center as the practice of yoga nidra begins now.
Become aware of the energy around this center and rest your attention deeper into this creative space.
Gently contract your perineum and sense into the quickening and aliveness deep within your erotic and creative center.
And inhale this sensation from your sacrum to your soft palate.
And yield and become heavy.
And let's do that twice more,
Suctioning the intrinsic muscles from your pelvic hammock up and in on an inhale.
And then weighty and soft on an exhale.
And one more time,
Inviting new information to pull up through you on this inhale.
Now sink back and fall open on an exhale.
If you've been working with a sankalpa,
You may repeat it three times now.
Otherwise,
Simply imagine placing a clockwise spiral.
The Neolithic Sun symbol at your creative centre now.
And repeat,
I am radiant,
Three times.
And feel that truth come to life with the power of the sun at your creative center.
If it feels right,
You can choose to keep your hands here for the duration of the practice,
Or you can let your arms slide out to the sides now with palms facing up.
And place your awareness to the back of your head.
Allow the weight of your whole head and face to drop back into the darkness.
Now place your awareness on the space underneath your shoulder blades.
Allow the weight of the entire contents of your chest to sink into the dark heavy space there.
Place your awareness on your dense and heavy sacral bone.
And allow for a complete descent into darkness.
And feel your arms become rested and heavy.
And as your back body sinks into darkness,
Your front body opens up to light.
And your breath is here.
Let it inhabit your body.
Notice the richness of the moment as it filters through the portals of your senses.
And now gravitate towards the warm,
Bright space of your heart.
And open up to love as your heart pulsates with aliveness.
Then inhale as a tunnel is formed for life force to flow from your heart back down to your pelvis.
Warmth and light loosening up your belly and enhancing the flow of your creative energy.
And then from your pelvis this tunnel runs back up through the radius of your heart to your soft palate at the centre of your brain.
Now back down to the centre of your heart and feel the space around your heart centre broadcasting warmth and light.
Down through the center of your body to feel your pelvis again.
And now back up through this pranic tunnel to the center of your brain.
Into the heart.
Pelvis,
And the brain.
Heart.
Pelvis.
And brain.
Now light up your hands in your awareness.
Your right hand,
The skin,
Bones,
Muscles,
Fingers,
And thumb.
Your right palm,
The back of your hand,
Light up in your awareness.
And now your left hand.
The skin,
Bones,
Muscles.
Fingers,
And thumb.
Palm of your left hand,
The back of your right hand.
Light up in your awareness.
Both hands now illuminated in your awareness together.
Both hands now.
And your feet.
Your right foot.
Ankle,
Heel,
Sole and top of your right foot.
The bones,
Muscles,
Skin,
And all five toes.
Your right foot.
And your left foot,
Your ankle,
Heel,
Sole,
The top of your left foot.
And the bones,
Muscles,
Skin,
And all five toes on your left foot.
Both feet radiate in your awareness now.
Both hands glow.
Now land at the centre of your eyebrows.
To your right eyeball,
Heavy in its socket.
Your left eyeball heavy in its socket.
Right eyelid and eyelashes.
Your left eyelid and eyelashes.
The bridge of your nose,
Your entire nose.
Your right ear,
Your left ear.
Both ears together.
From the sensitive skin of your cheeks to your lips,
Gums,
Teeth,
Chin.
Your whole jaw.
And see your whole face light up in your awareness now.
Your beautiful face bright,
Radiant and lit up now.
Back to your hands.
Warm light throbbing alive in your hands And down into your feet.
Pulsing,
Shining,
Vital beat.
The whole face.
In both your hands and both your feet.
Your face.
Your hands and your feet.
And sensing the whole right side of your body now.
And the whole left side.
And your back body heavy and dark.
Your front body open and light.
Breath anchors you to your glowing hands,
Face and feet.
And inside to your pelvis,
Heart and brain illuminated.
Your whole body alive in your awareness.
Held in the universe,
Your whole body.
Perfect and whole.
Every limb,
Cell,
Bone,
Hair,
Molecule.
Suspended and alive.
Your whole body.
Perfect as an unwritten story.
And start to shift your awareness to the space between your eyebrows A single-pointed awareness of symmetrical space at the back of your brain between your ears.
And allow yourself to be held in full support and safety here in this timeless,
Formless,
Limitless state.
Call on an embodiment of mental and emotional realms of awareness now.
Call in your full self to feel what's suggested.
Release into the mental and emotional experience of how it might feel to be annoyed.
Without moving toward any narrative.
Try to coax out the felt sensation of annoyance and notice where it lives in your body.
Annoyance.
And return back to your heavy back body.
How might it feel to be pleased?
Without moving into story.
Try to coax out the felt sensation of being pleased about something.
Notice where that lives in your body.
Pleased.
And then back to the dense heavy weight of your back body.
And the open brightness of your front body.
What does pain feel like?
Notice the sensations that arise when you feel pain as an emotional experience.
Allow yourself to feel this pain without needing to retrieve the story from the past.
Just feeling.
Pain.
And sliding away from pain.
What does pleasure feel like?
Pleasure.
Where does the frequency of pleasure get stirred up?
And then slip back again and allow pain to flow through as an emotional energy without restriction.
Pain.
And then pleasure.
Does the tone in your nervous system change when you experience pleasure?
Releasing pleasure to sense the heavy weight of your body.
And feeling pain again.
What is the atmosphere of this emotional pain?
And pleasure returns.
What part of your body elicits a change in energy when you experience pleasure?
And as pleasure flows through,
It is joined by pain,
The body steeped in both pleasure and pain,
Existing in your whole body at once.
And soften into the warm summer landscape that you perceived when you first closed your eyes today.
The garden of the world is charged with this dream of light.
The face of the earth grows brighter to a vision of plants and colors.
You reach your hands through the soft grass to dig into the warm summer soil with your fingertips.
The soles of your feet receive the summer energy throbbing through the earth's surface into your skin's surface.
You sense the effect of light on your closed eyelids.
It's like nursing the growth on the face of the earth.
Opens you up from the inside out.
You pull in and assimilate the quivering touch of sunlight.
You sense layers of yourself peeling away.
Peeling back to expose the very center of your being.
Which is becoming charged now by the fruiting,
The flowering,
The freedom.
Power.
And the potentiality of the sun.
And your front body receives the rising eroticism and instructions from the sun into your cells.
The effect of the sun encourages your spirit to rise up and sing.
You stand up and swing your hips,
Lick your lips and savour the fragrance of fresh cut grass,
Lilac,
Heather blossom and honeysuckle.
You pick a sweet swollen berry and crush it between your teeth and the juices drip down your throat.
The wide healing sun rays diffuse into medicinal herbs of St John's Wort and Calendula.
Yarrow and Mugwort.
You harvest some and keep them to make tinctures that capture the magic of this moment.
And this light urges you to continue now.
To live with renewed vigor.
The burning will of your true self.
You feel summoned by the sun and your relationship to it in this moment.
To receive the electromagnetic charge.
And walk onward into the unwritten next chapter of your story.
What are you being called into in service of the planet?
See this solarized version of you stepping into the vision you hold for yourself.
Stepping into a life filled with sensual pleasure.
You call on the old soul of your imagination to create a new life,
To become the creator.
What do you want to be in this life?
Go ahead and step into it.
Your front body shining with clarity,
Ease and alignment.
Go ahead and power your creation held in the support of the river of continuous human consciousness.
Feel from the dark unknown in your back body this push forward from your lineage of blood,
Bone,
Land and spiritual ancestors.
This gentle nudge for you to take your next best step forward.
As you walk forward toward posterity.
Knowing that the choices you make will reverberate long past your lifetime.
And slowly bring your awareness back into your body.
Into this room at this time.
Invite back with you your Sankalpa.
And the image of the sun's spiral.
The shape,
The motion of action,
Cycles,
Progress and revolution.
And taking your time keeping your eyes closed maintaining all of the solar charged energy you've cultivated.
As you rise up to a seated position.
Bring undulations through your spine,
Any sense of tension.
Sensual embodiment you'd like to pull from your practice into this next chapter of your life.
Come when you're ready.
Draw your hands.
Into prayer position at the center of your chest.
Bow your forehead down to your fingertips in honor of the shining ones.
The honourable ancestors.
Will watch over us.
Who hold us in support.
Whenever we need them.
The practice of yoga nidra is now complete.
Hari Om Tat Sat.
Namaste.
