Have you ever finally sat down at the end of the day only to realize you couldn't actually relax?
Your body is tired,
But your mind is still going.
Yoga Nidra was one of the practices that helped me understand the difference between being exhausted and being rested.
Now,
What people often think rest is,
When you have a moment to yourself you collapse on the couch.
You doom scroll on the phone,
You might watch Netflix.
But ultimately what all of this is,
They are simply distractions,
Right?
They're distracting you from true rest.
Now what I love about the Yoga Nidra practice is it invites us into conscious rest.
And what that means is your awareness remains present and you're not trying to empty the mind.
You're not trying to achieve anything.
You're simply allowing what is to be.
Now,
People often struggle with meditation,
Right?
Because in the traditional meditation practice,
You're sitting still,
Perhaps you're trying to force yourself into a cross-legged position,
But you know,
Your feet hurt,
Your knees hurt,
Your hips are not quite set up for it.
And then what happens with that as well,
You then start to realize and notice that,
Oh,
My mind is so busy,
Right?
I'm struggling with the physical sensations.
All these thoughts and frustrations might come up,
Right?
And it feels like we're doing it wrong.
Now,
Why Yoga Nidra is different is the traditional practice is actually done lying down.
You are guided through the whole practice by the teacher,
By the voice.
It is extremely accessible.
Complete,
Total beginners who have never meditated in their lives can do this,
Right?
And ultimately,
There is nothing to achieve in the Yoga Nidra practice.
And the beauty of the practice also is because you're lying down,
Sometimes when you first do this,
It's very,
Very normal that you might start to drift away and fall asleep.
And if you do,
That is also okay.
It just means your body is exhausted and you need to rest.
It ties in so beautifully,
Right?
Now one of the things I've noticed in both my own life and in the people that I teach is that many of us are very good at pushing through fatigue.
We are less practiced at resting before we reach that point of exhaustion.
It's one of the reasons I teach both yin yoga and yoga nidra.
Now where yin yoga is the physical practice of holding the pose for three to five minutes and this invites us into awareness through the body.
Yoga Nidra on the other hand invites us into awareness through rest.
Both of these practices help us slow down enough to notice what is actually happening.
So if yin yoga is a practice of learning to stay with the experience.
Yoga Nidra is a practice of learning to rest.
Within experience.
Neither of these practices asks us to become someone different.
But both invite us to meet ourselves exactly where we are.
And in a world that's constantly asking us to do more.
That can be a surprisingly radical practice to do less.
To do nothing,
To simply.
.
.
Bee?
And just see what's there,
What comes up.
Of course,
Yoga nidra is something that really has to be experienced rather than explained.
And if you're curious,
I invite you to explore one of the guided practices I've shared here.
See you there.
