Daring to Rest

by Karen Brody

  Even when you’re exhausted, your Wild Woman is there. The problem is that the moment she is taken out of the role of heroine, through physical or psychological oppression—as she was during the industrial revolution, when women were told that they should be happy wives only, or today, when women see they are not being paid equally for their work—she begins to die. While women have a history of being used for men’s enjoyment—as his counsel, to mother him, or make his life easier—actually, in our ancient memories, mostly before the ancient Egyptians ruled, women were celebrated for their power, seen as true matriarchs. Our more recent history has led women to hide their Wild Woman, our highly intuitive selves, and as a result, we are exhausted. Why? Because women who lead—at home and work—in ways that do not elevate their Wild Woman are disconnected from their internal power switches. They can be successful, but at a cost, and the cost is often ignoring their Wild Woman, who is, ironically, their means of not just leading, but also of thriving.

  If you’re not going into deep sleep often, your Wild Woman is not being fed, and you may continue to feel exhausted. I am convinced that this is why so many women have a very powerful, almost teary-eyed reaction when they discover yoga nidra meditation. It not only gives them permission to sleep deeply again and lie down, but it also puts them back in touch with their Wild Woman.

  Connect to Your Council of Women

  The great news is that during yoga nidra, what I call your Council of Women will often appear to help you stay connected to your Wild Woman. Your personal Council of Women is typically made up of female messengers or guides who come to you in a spiritual, not physical, form. Think of them as mentors. While you don’t consciously choose them, they often appear when you call for them toward the end of yoga nidra. They might be strong women you’ve known, like grandmothers or other female relations who have passed on. They may also be women you don’t know personally, such as powerful women you admire from history. They might even include the living women you respect. One woman in my rest program, for example, had a Council of Women that included her mother who had passed away, her two closest girlfriends, a business mentor, and well-known actress Meryl Streep. Another woman had no one familiar, but the women who came all arrived wearing the same blue color, her favorite color as a child. Often your Council of Women, like yoga nidra, helps point you toward freedom.

  Consulting your Council of Women is a way to consult the wise woman in you, reconnect to your inner knowing, and receive guidance. This practice is sometimes hard for women to grasp because you have to believe in what you can’t see. But once you get the hang of it, calling on your Council of Women is actually quick, easy, and deeply meaningful. If you’re like most women, you’ll love this practice because, finally, it feels as though a group of wise women have your back.

  As you already know, the Phase Two: Release Meditation specifically asks you to call in your Council of Women, so you may already feel familiar with them. From now through the final day of the Daring to Rest program, I suggest that you also practice calling in your Council of Women outside of the yoga nidra meditations. This is a quick and easy way to stay in touch with your inner world. You don’t have do this practice every day, but please do it as often as possible.

  Here’s how: Close your eyes, put your right and left hands over your heart, and ask your Council of Women to assemble. You can also imagine sending out a signal, such as a color or sound, and then watch them appear. Or first practice the Open Your Feminine Highway technique in chapter five. They may appear as images in your mind, or you’ll just receive an internal knowing that your Council of Women has arrived. This takes only a few minutes. The trick is to stay silent, breathe slowly, and imagine them assembling.

  Once your Council of Women has assembled, feel how they accept and bless exactly who you are. You don’t need to do anything else other than receive this blessing from them, but if you’re in a healing crisis or difficult situation, you may wish to ask them a question. It could be a direct question, such as, “How can I have less pain during menstruation?” or a more open question, like, “How can I feel more peaceful?” Ask them about an area of your life where you feel stressed. Don’t tell them a story; they already know all your stories. Just ask and wait for the answer. They may have questions in return. You can answer them, but try to be more in deep-listening mode after you ask your question. Let your Council of Women provide guidance.

  My Council of Women is usually three women, and when I close my eyes, they appear in my mind’s eye, sitting on couches, looking very relaxed. The actual women who show up have changed over the years, so don’t be expecting your Council of Women to always consist of the same women every time you call on them. Some women I know have many more than three show up; others have fewer. Expect your experience to be unique to you.

  If you’re not convinced you need a Council of Women or think it’s too “woo-woo,” let me share why you might want to reconsider. Deep down, you always know what action to take in your life, and know who you are, but sometimes you need a force within you to reveal it to you. This force is your Council of Women. They are the awakened part of you. When you practice yoga nidra, you’re resting into the awareness of who you are, and this opens you to seeing who you are not. Your Council of Women gives you the extra support you need to see clearly. They’re the transition team between yoga nidra (your inner world), and your everyday life (your outer world). They help you figure out what to give attention to in your life and what to withdraw attention from.

  The great news is that when you’ve been practicing yoga nidra meditation regularly and calling on your Council of Women, they will make themselves available quite readily in your everyday life.

  Another way of connecting to your Council of Women is with guidance cards. You can buy decks of guidance cards that depict feminine archetypes or goddesses. These feminine archetypes reveal human traits, meanings, values, and motives that exist within most women’s psyches. When we see these archetypes, they often help us tap into our Wild Woman nature. They can also help us understand our behaviors and patterns.

  If you’d prefer to make your own deck of guidance cards, use your soul whispers. Simply write your soul whispers from days 1 through 20 on separate pieces of paper or index cards.

  If one day you aren’t able to practice yoga nidra or call in your Council of Women, you can simply pick a guidance card instead. First, hold all the cards (or soul whisper papers) in your hands and ask that they be used for your highest good and the highest good of humanity. Then spread out the cards. Take a slow, deep breath and pick a card with your left hand. Read the meaning of the card you receive and notice how it relates to your life. Sense what the card is asking of you.

  Picking a daily guidance card is great for women who are having women’s health issues—anything from menstrual problems to fertility issues—because even though these are the moments when it’s important to slow down and connect to our Wild Woman, we usually feel overwhelmed with solving our health issue and can fall out of sync with her at these times. This is exactly when you need your Council of Women. Using your guidance cards to reconnect to your inner knowing can take a lot of pressure off you during a very tense period.

  Optional: Additional Practices for Your Wisdom Body

  During days 21 through 25, it’s important to not engage in activities that are particularly competitive because this can feed your ego and take you away from connection to your true self. This includes athletic yoga asana practices. The practices and activities that follow are some ways you can balance the wisdom body both during and outside of your yoga nidra practice.

  Activate Your Soul

  The wisdom body is connected to your soul, not to a specific power center. To increase intuition and feel a connection with your Wild Woman, you may wish to place your touchstone on the space between your eyebrows (your third eye) during your yoga nidra meditation or on an area of your body that you feel needs healing or creative energy. You might also like
to use a few drops of citrus or cypress essential oils on your clothes or inhale it from your hands. Wearing white or indigo helps activate the soul.

  So Hum Breath

  This is a beloved breathing meditation that many women find deeply relaxing because it connects you back to a higher state of consciousness and gives you access to your true self. So Hum is a Sanskrit phrase that means “I am that.” This phrase plugs you back into “all that is” in the universe. You can sit or lie down to practice this meditation. An ideal practice time is ten or more minutes, but just a few rounds will make a difference. Here’s how to do it:

  1.Take five deep, slow breaths through the nose. Imagine the breath going in and out of the space between your eyebrows—your third eye. This will oxygenate your blood and relax your body.

  2.Now, from your third eye, inhale slowly, imagining the breath traveling down to the base of your spine. At the same time, mentally say the sound Soooooo.

  3.Slowly exhale while imagining the breath moving from the base of the spine back up to the third eye. At the same time, silently saying the sound Hummmmmm.

  4.Feel your awareness expanding and merging with divine energy.

  5.Continue to silently chant Soooooo Hummmmmm in rhythm with your inhales and exhales.

  6.At the end, focus your attention on your third eye for a moment and feel the vibration of sensation in your body.

  Tapping Your Thymus

  Tapping your thymus is a simple practice you can do just before going to sleep or any time during the day to bring yourself to a more peaceful, open place. The thymus gland is located in the center of the chest, beneath the breastbone (sternum). If you feel nervous or stressed, tapping this place lightly with the knuckles a few times will bring you back into balance again. Tapping the thymus is particularly useful when you are going through a difficult time. It reminds you to shake ego’s hold on your emotions and thoughts.

  Optional: Diving Deeper

  Looking to dive more deeply into your Wild Woman? Consider these Daring to Rest optional prompts:

  •Describe your Wild Woman. If your Wild Woman were a color, what color would she be? If she had a name, what would her name be? Freewrite about her.

  •Express your Wild Woman through movement while listening to a song of your choice.

  •Draw or paint your Wild Woman. Show lots of detail, similar to an anatomical drawing.

  •If your Wild Woman could speak, what would she say? Freewrite as if you are your Wild Woman speaking.

  •Freewrite in your journal about your soul whispers.

  Key Points in Chapter Eight

  •Your wisdom body is the fourth of the five bodies of awareness that reside in you. It is the seat of your inner knowing and higher mind.

  •During yoga nidra meditation, you are guided through the wisdom body to access a timeless space where the grip of ego falls away. This provides peace of mind and access to your intuition.

  •As you balance your wisdom body, a familiar, robust Wild Woman emerges. The more you embrace her, the more you begin to shed the worn-out woman.

  9

  BLISS

  Knowing Everything Is Okay

  Days 26–30

  The moment I love the most during yoga nidra meditation is toward the end, when you’re barely sensing your body, all thoughts fade, your heart opens, and this sense of being connected to a universal fire emerges. Whether there’s something going on in your personal life or at work or in the world, you feel all boundaries dissolve, and an unshakeable sense that “all is right with the world” infuses every cell and atom, like an intravenous drip of love and compassion. You feel a powerful connection with humanity, a peaceful knowing of your infinite depth. You’re deeply asleep, often with zero thoughts—in your unconscious mind, in some sense virtually dead—and at the same time wildly alive, as if you’re in the transition stage of giving birth. There is a total absence of pleasure and pain in your mind. This is the fifth and final body of awareness: the bliss body.

  Basic Instructions for Days 26 to 30

  1.Practice the Phase Two: Release Meditation daily. Continue to use your most recent intention statement. Also continue to hold your touchstone in your left hand when practicing, or you may wish to place your touchstone on your heart.

  2.Continue to listen for and track your soul whispers.

  3.Optional: Continue to practice connecting with your Council of Women both during yoga nidra and outside of your yoga nidra meditation.

  4.Optional: Use the additional practices in this chapter to balance your bliss body.

  5.Optional: Use the Diving Deeper prompts to explore concepts in this chapter, including bliss, who you truly are, and sharing a difficult story.

  Following Your Bliss Body

  One of my favorite thinkers is mythologist and writer Joseph Campbell, whose work is often summarized by his phrase, “Follow your bliss.” Great quote, but when most people think of the meaning of bliss, they think it means they should book that trip to Bali. Nope. Bliss is about more than just pleasure. In the bliss body, you notice that your awareness can expand way beyond you, to infinity, and it’s this awareness that tears your heart wide open. This is a huge moment for many people during the practice of yoga nidra because it’s when the small self in you steps aside and the big self shows up. You feel a sense of freedom and expansiveness. You start showing up with love and compassion more easily in all situations in your life. In the bliss body, you can access all of the qualities of the heart—bliss, peace, harmony, love, understanding, empathy, clarity, unity, compassion, kindness, and forgiveness.

  It is rumored that later in his career, as a lecturer at Sarah Lawrence College, Campbell was so dismayed by the misinterpretation of the word bliss that he said he should have told people to “follow their blisters.” The good news is that’s exactly what you’ve been doing in yoga nidra meditation—meeting and greeting emotional “blisters”—which is why you’re now well primed to balance the bliss body.

  I nearly did a yoga nidra backflip when I read that Campbell’s concept of bliss came from the same spiritual teachings as yoga nidra meditation. Campbell noticed that in Sanskrit there is a well-known term, satchitananda, which means “the essence of the divine self that lives within you.” This word breaks down to three words: sat, chit, and ananda. Sat means “truth,” chit means “consciousness,” and ananda means “bliss.” Campbell believed the easiest concept for people to understand was ananda, and he told people to “follow your bliss” because if we did, truth and consciousness would follow. Unfortunately, many people didn’t get it; they didn’t see that bliss is an inside job.

  To access bliss, instead of flying to Bali, the journey you must make is to your inner world. If you don’t, then bliss is seen through the eyes of ego, and you begin grabbing at material things—like a hammock with the perfect ocean view in Bali—and expect they will bring long-term pleasure. In yoga nidra, every time you practice, you travel to your inner world, and it’s here that truth and consciousness are activated via the wisdom body. You start to see the truth of who you are and what the world around you is—no more illusions—and this then gives rise to bliss.

  The bliss body feeds your big self, not your small self. Women tell me that during the bliss body part of a yoga nidra meditation, they feel this floating-on-air feeling or that their heart opens beyond the boundaries of their body. One woman told me that she felt it “allowed me to see who I am no matter where I am in work or where I live.” One woman told me that she felt “reconnected to my essence,” and another said she felt “the deepest peace in my body and outside my body.” Such feelings and sensations are your bliss body being scrubbed clean, the final layer of emotional exhaustion letting go. In this moment, you turn on your internal power switch, making yourself fully available for health and wholeness.

  A balanced bliss body allows you to recognize that the source of love is within you. This understanding comes because you are in the deepest state of sleep, b
elow the ego and mind, in the unconscious. This place is like a Garden of Eden, where unity and oneness flourish. Your body is relaxed and at total peace. And it’s here you viscerally learn the secrets of achieving deep peace in your everyday life. Sleep problems, as well as health issues, are resolved here because you’re connected to the source within you. You’re an ocean, not a wave anymore, and this understanding connects you to a higher power, turning darkness into light. You’re no longer afraid of your light. Now you are who you are, which is when the final veil of exhaustion lifts. You realize how tired you were from looking for yourself everywhere, and finally you are free. You have calmed your outer senses, and now the inner flame is lit—a deep love within—and you’re connected to a universal fire, to all humans and nonhumans. As you cleanse the bliss body, all of this is downloaded into your being.

  The bliss body is your deepest, most subtle layer of being—your core existence, a consciousness that’s beyond the limits of the body. It’s here you begin to feel into a state of being that has always existed but was buried by the other four bodies. Accessing the bliss body removes the final thin layer of illusion, and once it is lifted, you are able to see the pureness of your soul.

  This timeless state of being does occasionally appear to us in our outer world, such as when we’re holding a newborn baby, watching a birth, painting, or writing a poem. All of these things touch the bliss body. These experiences make us feel alive, full of possibility, open, spacious, and feathery light. Who can look at a healthy newborn baby and not feel their heart open and a hope for the future? Everything feels like it’s okay. Most likely, you’ve had at least a few these experiences during your life.