Let your senses open.
Bring your attention to the inside of your mouth.
Feel your sense of taste,
Emptying the mouth of any tension or holding,
And filling it with awareness and sensation,
Decompressing jaws and tongue and throat.
Then let attention flow from the mouth to the ears.
Notice your sense of sound and hearing,
And how you can pick up on the layers of sound in the near distance and the far distance,
Listening not only with your ears,
With your whole body.
Let attention flow from the ears to the nose.
Feel the touch of breath inside the nostrils,
Letting fragrance come to you.
Noticing if the air seems more dominant in one nostril or the other.
Let attention flow from the nose to the eyes.
Move up the physical eyes,
Completely committing them to rest from the world of looking and seeing and taking in external stimulation.
Decompress all the muscles around your eyes and your forehead and temples,
And let the eyeballs fall back and down as your internal vision becomes more sensitive and expansive.
From eyes to skin and your sense of touch,
Feeling the whole skin of the body,
Sensitive,
Receptive.
Noticing how you can breathe into your own skin,
Every pore of the skin gently expanding and condensing,
One breath at a time.
And notice the touch of air against the skin,
Places of warmth,
Places of coolness,
Places where the body meets the floor and where clothes meet the skin.
All five senses wide open.
In Yoginidra we practice something called Sankalpa,
Which is a Sanskrit word that means intention or deep resolve.
And you can think of Sankalpa like planting a seed into not only this meditation but also your daily life.
To practice Sankalpa we first take a moment to practice gratitude,
Allowing yourself to notice and experience anything you can feel genuinely thankful for.
Maybe it's one simple thing,
Or maybe it's many things.
Feeling gratitude as an embodied experience,
Not just an intellectual idea.
And then from that place of thankfulness,
Ask yourself,
In this moment,
What is my deepest longing?
What is my deepest,
Most heartfelt desire?
And simply notice what bubbles up when you inquire.
What arises within you?
Whatever the answer to those questions happens to be on this day,
That will form the basis of your Sankalpa for this practice.
As it becomes clear to you,
Let it blossom into language that makes sense to you and repeat it to yourself three times in your mind like a mantra.
State it in the present tense as though it's already happening.
Then give thanks and let it go.
We're going to circulate your consciousness through the body now.
You can imagine this like a meditative massage as you learn to shower your awareness into different layers of the body.
Each part of your body has a different control center in your brain,
And as you move awareness through different parts,
You're not only relaxing them,
But also clearing nerve pathways to the brain,
Stimulating a state of consciousness that is both deeply relaxed as well as highly attuned and alert.
Imagine by bringing your attention to the palms of your hands.
Experience the palms of the hands as a mass of sensation and energy,
Noticing feelings of pressure,
Warmth,
Or tingling.
The palms of the hands as a vibrance,
A pulse,
A buzz.
And now bring your attention to the right hand thumb,
Second finger,
Third finger,
Fourth finger,
Pinky finger.
Feel the spaces between the fingers on the right side,
The tips of the fingers,
Palm of the right hand,
Back of the right hand,
Right wrist,
Forearm,
Elbow,
Upper arm,
Right shoulder,
Armpit,
Right waist,
Hip,
Thigh,
Knee,
The space just underneath the right knee,
Lower leg,
Right ankle,
Heel,
Sole of the right foot,
Top of the right foot,
Right big toe,
Second toe,
Third toe,
Fourth toe,
And pinky toe.
And feel the spaces between the toes and the tips of the toes.
And feel the whole right side of the body at once.
Now shift your attention to the left hand thumb,
Second finger,
Third finger,
Fourth finger,
Pinky finger.
Feel all the spaces between the fingers on the left side and the tips of the fingers,
Palm of the left hand,
Back of the left hand,
Left wrist,
Forearm,
Elbow,
Upper arm,
Shoulder,
Left armpit,
Waist,
Hip,
Thigh,
Left knee,
And the space just underneath the left knee,
Left lower leg,
Ankle,
Heel,
Sole of the left foot,
Top of the left foot,
Left big toe,
Second toe,
Third toe,
Fourth toe,
And pinky toe.
Feel the spaces between the toes and the tips of the toes.
And feel the whole left side of the body at once.
Bring your awareness to the base of the throat,
The base of the tongue,
The center of the tongue,
The tip of the tongue,
Teeth,
Gums,
Jaws,
And lips.
The whole mouth full of sensation.
Feel the chin,
Cheeks,
And cheekbones,
Ears,
And earlobes,
Nose,
And tip of nose,
Left nostril,
Right nostril,
Left eyeball,
Right eyeball,
Left eyelid,
Right eyelid,
Left eyebrow,
Right eyebrow.
Feel the space between the eyebrows,
Both temples,
The forehead,
The whole face at once,
Top of the head,
Back of the skull,
Back of the neck,
Base of the throat,
Both shoulders,
The chest,
The upper back,
Rib cage,
Middle back,
Belly,
Low back,
Pelvis,
Buttocks,
The whole spine,
The whole torso,
Both legs together,
Both arms together,
Head and torso together,
The whole body at once.
Sense the whole body as a field of sensation,
Radiating in every direction.
All these individual sensations mingling and gliding together like a piece of music.
Feel the touch of the ground and the solid density of your bones sinking down through layers of muscle and tissue.
Become aware of fluid sensations.
If your body is like the ocean,
What are the waves like in this moment?
Feel liquid sensations.
Body as a stream of open waterways.
And feel warmth and light behind and within your eyes,
Your eyes like a soft glowing fire.
Feeling and sensing the glow of inner fire.
Feel the movement and touch of air around you and within you.
And the breath like wind through the trees,
Body like a light breeze or an expansive cloud.
And sense the space between you and the ground and the space between you and the sky.
Sensing the body clear and open like space.
Now experience the body as a wholeness,
A global feeling from head to toe.
And feel the body breathing itself.
Inhaling,
Feeling global sensation and exhaling,
Feeling global sensation.
And sense the entire front side of the body,
The whole front side of the body as a radiance that emanates into the space in front of the body.
Can you move with this sensation out,
Noticing how far out this feeling extends.
Awareness moving an inch or three inches or perhaps a foot or more into the space in front of you.
And you feel how awareness can saturate the space in front of you,
Touching the walls,
Perhaps even pervading through the walls of this space.
Exchanging thinking for sensing.
And then breathe your way all the way through to the back side of the body.
Sense the membrane of skin on the back of the body and the sensation that the whole back side of the body is made of.
Sense directly the back of the body,
Back of the arms,
Back of the legs.
And feel how awareness can move out behind the body,
Saturating the space beyond and beneath the body.
Perhaps there is a throb or a pulse to this body sensation.
Now sense the left side of the body,
Letting attention wander over to the left.
Can you feel yourself as an eminence that moves out and to the left side of your body,
Saturating the space to the left side?
Move awareness to the right side of the body,
Letting awareness extend out to the right,
Beyond the boundary of the skin,
Touching the space,
Touching the walls,
Perhaps even penetrating the walls.
Now assemble all these directions,
Front,
Back,
Left,
Right.
Awareness open simultaneously to all directions.
Body as a global experience of sensation,
Giving up thinking,
Just feeling.
Can you feel how consciousness can move out in all directions,
Sensing even the environment beyond these walls?
Feel your consciousness pervading these walls in every direction.
Perhaps you can hear the sound of a bird,
Traffic in the distance,
Or wind through the trees.
Or just the silence and stillness in the air outside.
Feel how consciousness moves through the walls,
Interpenetrates,
And wanders into the trees outside and the sky.
Feel yourself reclining deeply into this experience,
And ask yourself what is your experience of your body now?
Is it solid?
Is it open space?
Does it have a center or a periphery?
Relax into the direct experience of your body in this moment.
Let awareness expand.
Consciousness letting go into itself.
Nothing you need to do.
Nothing you need to know or get in this place.
Unconstricted by time and space.
Your Being.
Notice how you feel.
Let yourself linger in this silent space for as long as you like.
When you decide to come out,
Let it happen slowly,
Taking your time to transition back to your waking world,
Carrying the effects of the practice into the rest of your day.
