Rooted Rest: Yoga Nidra

This practice is a trauma informed invitation as part of the Rooted Method to slow down and return to yourself. Rooted Rest is the approach I developed for trauma survivors who need something steadier than traditional meditation and softer than the pressure found in many wellness spaces. This session helps the body drop into a state of deep rest where the nervous system can settle and the mind can begin to loosen its grip. You do not need to know how to meditate. You do not need to force anything. All you are asked to do is arrive exactly as you are and let the practice hold you. This is a safe place to land and breathe again.

The background music was carefully written by Jennie to incorporate a 528Hz frequency, aiding in deep restoration down to a cellular level.

Transcript

I invite you to settle into whatever shape your body is choosing right now,

Even if it doesn't feel like the perfect shape,

Even if you're not sure how to rest yet.

See,

You do not have to arrive gracefully,

You do not have to settle softly.

You don't even have to know what you're doing.

Simply come as you are,

A body with its own history,

Its own storms,

Its own ways of holding on,

Let yourself be held by what is beneath you,

Even if only by an inch.

If it feels safe enough,

Allow the eyes to close or soften until the edges of the room begin to blur.

Allow the world to dim in a way that the sky dims before dusk,

Not suddenly,

But gradually,

The way light softly gives itself permission to rest.

Feel the weight of your body collecting itself,

Feel the earth catching you without hesitation.

Feel gravity pulling you down like an old friend who always shows up no matter how long it has been.

Nothing in you has to perform calmness,

Nothing in you has to let go,

Nothing in you has to surrender on command.

You only have to be here,

Breathing in whatever way you are breathing,

Feeling whatever you are feeling,

Not forcing anything that your body is not ready to offer.

Allow your presence to settle like silt,

Drifting to the bottom of a river after being carried for miles.

You are allowed to soften by accident.

You are allowed to rest without feeling like you deserve it.

You are allowed to arrive without being ready.

Begin to notice the places where your body meets support.

Maybe the back of the head,

The curve of the shoulders,

The weight of the pelvis,

The legs that have carried you in and out of so many stories.

The heels that know more about endurance than any part of you ever asked for.

Feel how these points of contact aren't asking for anything.

They don't want you to be healed or strong or grateful or composed,

They simply hold you because that is what the earth does.

Allow your awareness to drift to the breath,

Not to correct it or to deepen it,

But simply witness its shape.

The inhale arriving like the first cool wind on a sweltering day.

The exhale departing like a long overdue truth.

The soft pause between them,

Like the quiet moment between waves when the ocean draws in its breath before releasing again.

Your breath is not performance,

It is a messenger,

A quiet animal that tells the truth about what your body believes.

Notice where the breath goes and notice where it doesn't.

Notice the tight corners of the ribs,

The places that feel locked or forgotten,

The parts of you you do not trust.

There are rooms in this body that the breath hasn't visited in years.

Let it knock gently,

It doesn't need to enter,

Simply knocking is enough.

And then imagine the body as a landscape,

The ribs as a forest of tall pines,

Each inhale brushing lightly through their branches and each exhale drifting through them like fog at dawn.

The spine a winding river bending around memory.

The pelvis a vast field,

Sometimes fertile,

Sometimes barren,

Yet always capable of holding what settles there.

The heart is a wild orchard with seasons of blooming and seasons of loss.

The throat is a canyon carved by years of unspoken truths,

Holding echoes you thought disappeared.

You are not fixing this landscape,

You are walking through it gently,

Letting the air move around you,

Letting the silence gather like morning light.

Slowly begin to map the body,

Not with precision but with presence,

As if your awareness is a lantern moving through the rooms of a home you once lived in but haven't visited for a very,

Very long time.

Bring that lantern into the right hand.

To each finger,

The thumb,

The index,

The middle,

The ring,

The pinky.

Trace the palm,

The back of the hand.

Move up the wrist and sense the delicate hinge that has held so much of your life's weight.

Move up the forearm,

Perhaps into a corridor of strength or fatigue.

Into the elbow we meet a crossroad that moves into the upper arm with a long stretch into the shoulder,

A harbor where burdens have been docked for years.

Move the lantern across the collarbone into the left shoulder,

Down the left arm,

Pausing any place that feels as though it is speaking to you,

Even if it is a whisper.

Hold nothing tightly,

Force nothing open.

You are not here to break through anything,

You are here to witness.

Allow the lantern to move to the face,

The jaw where old anger lives,

The cheeks where so many tears have passed,

The eyes that have seen more than they ever admitted,

The forehead smoothing like water settling after the storm.

Let awareness fall into the throat,

That narrow hallway where truths have been swallowed,

Where silence has shaped the architecture of your life.

Let the awareness drift into the chest,

A place that carries orchards of memory,

A place where grief builds nests in the branches of the ribs,

A place where joy sometimes returns in migrating patterns,

Unexpected yet real.

Feel the center of the chest widen or contract or remain unmoving.

All are valid.

Move the lantern into the belly,

The soft animal of instinct and intuition.

This is the part of you that knew danger before you could name it.

It knew safety before you could trust it.

Notice how it rises and falls like gentle hills in late afternoon.

Bring awareness to the pelvis,

A bowl that holds stories buried so deep the mind barely remembers.

The body has never forgotten.

Let the lantern lift down through the legs,

The thighs with their ancient strength,

The knees bending like weathered hinges,

The shins quiet like a moonlit road,

Ankles are small worlds of their own,

Feet hold memory in every bone.

Let the whole body be held in one wide field of awareness,

A soft field in late summer,

Tall grass moving slowly in the wind,

Nothing hurried and nothing forced.

Now,

Slowly,

Let that awareness move into emotion,

Not emotion as story,

But emotion as weather inside the body.

Invite in heaviness.

It appears as a gentle sinking,

Like stones settling to the bottom of a clear lake,

Not oppressive heaviness,

Honest,

Raw and real heaviness.

Allow it to stay for a few breaths.

Now,

Invite lightness,

A softening around the shoulders,

A small lift behind the heart as if long held breath finally exhaled.

Notice heaviness return.

Notice lightness return.

Heaviness,

Lightness,

Heaviness,

Lightness.

Your emotional body is learning that movement again,

Learning it can hold more than one truth at a time,

Learning that a simple moment can hold contradiction without collapsing.

Now,

Invite ease,

Just a trace of ease,

Like a thin beam of sunlight touching a wall through an opening in the curtain.

And then tension,

Not dramatic tension,

Just notice the places that brace instinctively,

The way the diaphragm holds its breath,

The way the shoulders rise,

The pelvis grips,

The jaw tightens for a reason you can't name.

Notice tension.

Notice ease.

Notice tension.

Notice ease.

Notice tension.

You do not have to feel these fully.

You are not pulling emotion out of yourself.

You are simply giving your system options,

Choices it did not have long ago.

Allow the breath to return as the anchor,

The tide brushing the shoreline of your ribs,

In and out,

In and out.

Imagine the breath drifting through your body like warm water,

Touching old tension the way warmth touches ice,

Not aggressively,

But with slow persuasion.

Feel it slide through the throat,

Across the sternum,

Down the spine,

Into the pelvis,

Pooling at the low belly,

Each breath saying,

You are allowed to exist without bracing.

Allowing the breath to soften the body in a way that rain softens hard soil.

And now imagine a landscape again,

Not a vivid picture,

Not a fantasy even,

Just a sense.

Imagine forest with a long,

Tall tree line.

A quiet field with golden grass blowing in the wind.

A dim,

Warm room with soft shadows that dance against the walls and ceiling.

A shoreline where water meets land in slow rhythm.

Let the body choose.

And then feel yourself resting in this place,

As if the earth beneath you has shaped itself into a cradle that knows your body more intimately than you do.

You do not have to trust this place fully,

Just allow it to exist.

And then imagine a soft,

Diffused light floating above you.

It's like morning light filtered through the clouds,

Or perhaps moonlight dissolving against fog.

This light is not here to heal you.

In fact,

It isn't here to fix anything.

It is here to witness,

To hold you in attention without any demand.

Let it drift slowly over the crown of the head first,

Painting warmth across the scalp,

Softening the forehead,

Melting the tension around the eyes.

Let it move across the jaw,

A jaw that has clenched through every unspoken apology,

Every quiet endurance.

Let it move down the throat,

Gentle illumination in a place that has been a corridor of truth withheld.

Across the chest,

A place of orchards,

Of blooming,

Of burning,

Of rebuilding.

Down the arms,

The limbs that have reached and held and fought and protected.

Let the light rest there.

Let it travel the spine,

Vertebrae by vertebrae,

As if each bone remembers its original alignment beneath the weight of everything you have carried.

Let it warm the belly,

The lower abdomen,

The deep bowl of the pelvis.

Imagine the fascia unwinding like old knots loosening.

It's not releasing all at once,

It's just softening one fiber at a time.

Feel it move down the legs,

To the ankles,

Into the soles of the feet.

Your body is not letting go,

It is letting be.

Imagine the whole landscape of the body quieting,

Settling,

Lowering itself into a state of rest so deep it feels like returning to something ancient,

Yet familiar.

The edges of the body blur,

The breath becomes a tide for the background.

Thoughts dissolve like mist,

Turned off by the morning sun.

Allow yourself to drift.

Allow yourself to wander in your own softness.

Allow yourself to descend into the layers of consciousness where the body repairs itself.

You are not disappearing.

You are arriving somewhere deeper.

Perhaps you begin to feel the faint pulse of the world beneath you again.

The hum of the earth,

The quiet electricity of being alive.

Allow the mind to rearrange itself without guidance.

And then begin the slow return,

Not upward,

But outward.

Like a tide moving back towards the shore,

Feel the breath growing steadier.

Feel the weight of the body returning,

Feel the boundaries of your skin coming back into focus.

Feel the room re-entering your awareness.

Begin small movement,

Fingers,

Toes,

Jaw,

Shoulders.

Allow the body to gather itself piece by piece.

Rolling gently to one side,

Pause in the liminal place,

That place between rest and waking.

When you are ready,

Gently begin to rise up slowly,

The way dawn pushes itself into the sky,

Gradual and unhurried,

Yet inevitable.

Sitting upright,

Allow the spine to rise like a tall tree growing in a deep soil.

Let the shoulders rest like leaves that rustled through the autumn wind.

Take one breath in through the nose,

And a slow breath out through the mouth.

Notice,

Notice how you feel,

Maybe different,

Not better,

Not fixed,

Just different.

Maybe reorganized in some subtle way,

And know that your body will continue this work long through the day after you leave this moment.

Our practice is now complete.

Thank you.