Nidra For Steady Energy

This short nidra practice will give you the steady energy you need to cope with anxiety and seasonal changes.
Take care of the tired and sensitive creature of your body. Invite presence and quiet to settle your nerves and soothe any agitation in your body and mind.

Transcript

Hi,

I'm Cathy French.

Prepare your body to deepen into Shavasana here with comfort and well-being as your focus.

Get a folded blanket or thin pillow for beneath your head to support your skull.

We'll set this position up with intention today to reduce agitation and restlessness in the body from the outset.

So,

If you're lying down already,

Just briefly pop up onto your elbows and pick up your hips,

Slide your buttocks down away from your low back.

And then from here,

Descend your spine onto the soft surface beneath you,

One vertebrae at a time.

Now glide your shoulder blades a fraction closer to your spine,

Even if that movement is just energetic.

Notice the space it creates for your lungs.

And you're here,

Fully embodied and ready to explore who you are beyond thought.

Take in a big deep breath,

Flinging your windows and doors open.

And then exhale and sink back,

Fall open.

Just hear breathing open to sensation.

Let the world be as it is.

Attune to the earth element in your body,

Grounding your nervous system downward.

Move toward your felt experience by noticing the weight of your feet.

Feel your heels empty into the earth beneath you.

Notice the heaviness of your calf muscles and the musculature of your legs releasing from the heavy bones.

Your hips drop and widen,

And the skin of your sacral plates spreads and softens.

Your reproductive organs release of any holding.

And now step inside the heaviness of your hands,

Inhabiting them.

Nothing exists except the weight and feeling of hands.

Without looking,

How do you know that your hands are there?

Awareness of hands,

The simplicity of life vibrating and pulsing through them.

And from your hands,

Awareness travels into your arms.

Feel the internal space of your arms becoming alive with your awareness.

In your rib cage,

Your lungs drop and soften and sink.

Let your belly be soft and fat.

Your prana or energy and consciousness starts to settle back into the back of your body.

The back of your skull broadens,

Widens and descends.

Your forehead and cheekbones float and spread toward the ceiling.

Your facial expression dissolves and the interior of your brain retracts inward towards the center.

The roof of your mouth is released of language and it domes upward toward your brain stem,

Becoming alive with feeling.

For the next few moments you'll use your breath,

Specifically the practice of Ujjayi Pranayama,

To settle your nerves and soothe any residual agitation in your body mind.

This practice is deeply tranquilizing.

You'll seal your lips and make a gentle ha sound by slightly narrowing the back of your throat.

Keep your palate in neutral as you do this and it sounds like this.

We'll take seven slow rhythmic breaths together.

Slow like the breath of a baby sleeping.

At the end of your next exhale release the back of your throat and take one more big breath.

And let that go.

We now begin the practice of Yoganidra.

Quietly observe your body resting here and orient yourself to the time of year.

Position yourself at this moment in your life,

The date,

Where you are,

And open yourself to all of it.

The magnitude of your potential is frequently overwhelming to you.

You're confronted with so many new possibilities each day and your bigness,

Your beauty is welling up and birthing out of you right now.

You need time and space to digest all of the new experiences that arrive with growing light and longer days.

Allow for the full effect of gravity on your heavy bones now.

Really sink back into the sparkling dark.

Exhaustion and overwhelm is rest calling your body down to the earth for support.

We turn to our Yoganidra practice to take care of the tired and sensitive creature of the body.

Inviting delicious presence and giving ourselves permission to do absolutely nothing for a little while.

Be willing to rest wide open and be nourished by the practice.

To absorb the strength and sustenance that you need.

We come to this practice to seek benevolent quiet.

To merge with the softness and kindness around us and to take it in.

Sweep your body for any residual tension.

Until serenity and deep rest suffuse your entire body.

Now bring your inner gaze to the point between your eyebrows.

And as you move your vision up and in,

Notice a release of pressure around your eye sockets.

As you gaze up,

The backs of your eyes gaze down.

And your awareness is drawn to a bright current of energy that streams like a shaft of light through the crown of your head.

All the way down to the symmetrical center of your being through your pelvic bowl and then beyond the base of your body.

With the backs of your eyes you can peer down into the open channel of your body.

Down through the energy of your throat and see this light expand to its fullest around the region of your heart.

You look into and feel your heart.

Like the felt sense of fire and light and you sink into the space that exists there.

This heart that exists beyond division,

Beyond polarity,

Beyond good,

Beyond bad,

Right,

Wrong,

Past,

Future,

Male,

Female.

Widen your attention now to take in the spaciousness around your heart.

Have a direct experience of the sheer expanse of your heart and acknowledge the sensation of vastness.

Ask your heart to tell you what it needs.

Wait for a feeling to well up.

And once you're ready formulate that feeling into one word.

Use this word to create an intention by placing the word I or I am in front of the word.

We'll move deeper into the practice now and relax the most sensitive and nerve rich points in your body.

Absorb all your senses inward and lie there as a cloud of awareness.

Noticing the following.

The point between your eyebrows,

The hollow of your throat,

Your right shoulder joint,

Right elbow joint,

Middle of your right wrist,

Tip of your right thumb,

Tip of your right index finger,

Tip of your right middle finger,

Tip of your ring finger,

Tip of your small finger,

Right wrist joint,

Right elbow joint,

Right shoulder joint,

The hollow of your throat.

Left shoulder joint,

Left elbow joint,

Middle of your left wrist,

Tip of your left thumb,

Tip of your index finger,

Middle finger,

Ring finger,

And small finger.

Left wrist joint,

Left elbow joint,

Left shoulder joint,

Hollow of the throat.

Heart center,

Right breast,

Heart,

Left breast,

Heart center,

Solar plexus,

Navel center,

Right hip joint,

Right knee joint,

Right ankle joint,

Right big toe,

Tip of the second toe,

Tip of your third toe,

Tip of your fourth toe,

Tip of your small toe,

Right ankle joint,

Right knee joint,

Right hip joint,

Navel center,

Left hip joint,

Left knee joint,

Left ankle joint,

Left big toe,

Tip of your second toe,

Tip of your third toe,

Tip of your fourth toe,

Tip of your small toe,

Left ankle joint,

Left knee joint,

Left hip joint,

Navel center,

Solar plexus,

Heart center,

Hollow of your throat,

The center between your eyebrows.

Life is here.

This is how it feels to inhabit your whole body at once.

Lie here in wholeness,

An expanse of vibration,

Sensation,

And feeling.

A cloud of open awareness.

Explore this harmony.

Everything alive in you at once,

In wholeness and innocence,

Complete and perfect.

Without changing anything,

Watch the tide of your breath lap against the banks of this wholeness,

This total awareness.

Let your attention be pulled by the breath back into this pool of sensation and texture.

Sensation exists wherever you drop your awareness.

Noticing with this awareness,

Noticing as this awareness.

Think deeper and deeper into the subtlety of this hum of aliveness,

Into the micro-movements of your breath shimmering in between it all.

No energy wasted.

The separation between the feeling of your body and the spaciousness around you dissolves above and below you.

Shakespeare said that nothing is either good or bad,

But thinking makes it so.

Reach back inside this celebration of sensation and awareness to your heart at the intersection of it all.

And from this creative state of wholeness and oneness,

Open yourself up to experience what's described.

Using relaxed awareness,

Start to explore your sensitivities to the following experiences.

Stay present and relaxed as you allow these experiences to occur in your body without story.

Awaken anxiety.

Use your senses to remember how it feels to be anxious.

Bring the feeling up.

Breathe as you allow any associations with anxiety to be awakened in you in safety.

Anxiety.

And now awaken serenity.

How do your cells respond to the feeling of peace or serenity?

And return to anxiety.

Can you feel its temperature?

And where in your body does the energy of anxiety uncover itself the most?

Without attachment,

Feel where anxiety is located in your body.

And serenity.

Can you sense any subtle changes to your energy or your musculature?

What does serenity feel like in your body as a sensation?

Stay and breathe in the feeling of serenity now.

And now let the anxiety and serenity be held together in your body at once.

Continue to hold both of these sensations in your body at once.

Anxiety and serenity.

Experiencing them both in this moment together.

Fully relaxed and totally safe.

Conscious of anxiety and serenity everywhere in your body.

Your whole being.

This wholeness is reflected in your frequency now.

And balance is being restored to all the systems of your body.

Resting back into this vibrating oneness you're lying on a hillside in a grassy patch of sunlight.

You look out to a view of mountains and are flanked by beach and pine trees.

You sense the trees excited language through the roots beneath you.

You're lying in the heart of wilderness,

Open and innocent.

The day is full of birdsong,

Worms burrow,

Beetles and bees move around you.

And your body is absorbed and dissolved by the pulsing organic force of life on this hillside.

A shiver runs down your back.

A rain cloud darkens part of the sky.

And you sense cleansing rain move across the mountain range.

The spring sunlight passes through raindrops,

Refracts and a dramatic rainbow arcs above you.

You rest back onto this living hillside and rest your eyes as these colours become more profound,

More kaleidoscopic.

As you look on geometric patterns and glowing fractals appear before you.

An energy from beyond your senses travels through your whole body as you surrender back and receive.

You blink your eyes open and squint through your lashes to see the rainbow has become a circle.

Whose centre is on the line stretching from the sun to your own eyes.

You know yourself as essence here.

You are the centre of the circle.

An electromagnetic spectrum of colour spanning the length of your spinal column and your tender heart at the centre of it all.

Dissolved,

Absorbed and pulsing with beauty.

Growing more open and soft with each breath.

Receiving and giving more love than ever before.

Come back to your heart now.

To your breath and your body in this place.

Usher your sankalpa back from your heart space and broadcast it out into space.

Feel the certainty of your sankalpa filling up the room that you are in.

Stretch yourself back into the room and take your time to roll over onto your side.

Maintaining serenity in your body.

Watch the nuance of your breath.

The tide of life washing through you.

Inhales creation,

Inspiration.

And exhales out any oldness,

Staleness,

Stiffness.

The practice of yoga nidra is now complete.

As you make your way to a seat I'll read you this quote from Rumi to end the practice.

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field.

I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass the world is too full to talk about.

Ideas,

Language,

Even the phrase each other doesn't make any sense.

Hari Om Tat Sat Namaste.

Reviews

I’ve been practicing Nidra for years and this is on another level. Informed, insightful, inspired, creative, loving, spirit filled and effective.
Thank you
Namaste 🙏

Wonderful from the use of language to the sound of her Irish lilt. I'll meet you in th field. Thank you!

Beautiful and rich! Like no other nidra. I look forward to doing it again soon❤️🙏

Beautiful yoga nidra practice
Thank you
Namaste 🩷

Amazing! That felt absolutely divine. Could not feel more blessed right now 💛

This is one of my favorite Yoga Nidras ever. Thank you ❤️

Wonderful cuing of the sankalpa to set it up and recall it toward the end. So powerful! Thank you 🙏

Magical... beautiful imagery, peaceful and restorative. Thank you!

Lovely gentle and steady guidance. Nice to start with feet. Especially helpful prompts for relaxing deeply. Thank you!

Great!!! This is a fantastic meditation for just calming and balancing.

I appreciated the invitation and guidance into serenity.

I loved this fresh and original nidra experience.
I've never heard that lead in to sankalpa and found it really simplifying and helpful.
Thankyou!

That was very good. It was very relaxing. Thank-you.

Thank you for a lovely practice this morning. Namaste 💚🙏

Lovely. Thank you!

Thank you so much.

Deeply nourished by the beautiful weaving of words🙏

That was so different and poetry got my body <3 i will be returning to this. thank you!

Nice way to start my morning

Beautiful, deep, inspiring and restful. I feel at ease and moved.