by Karen Brody
How to start? Go to a laughter yoga class. (Yes, there are such things.) Or get a group of friends or family members together; one of you starts laughing, and this will trigger others to laugh. This is a great activity to do with your entire family. You can even laugh by yourself in front of the mirror. Keep laughing for at least ten minutes.
Nurture Others
People often feel bliss when they’re nurturing others. Notice I didn’t say, “when they take care of others.” While nurturing and caretaking are similar concepts, to me, nurturing comes from a place of choice, while caretaking feels like something you have to do.
One of the biggest lessons yoga nidra teaches us is that we have choices in how we approach a situation. If you are a caretaker (perhaps of parents, kids, or a loved one), it is essential to do as the airlines instruct: put your oxygen mask on first and then secure it on someone you are taking care of. This means to be sure you are nurturing yourself before you start nurturing others.
If you’re not a caretaker, then nurturing others could mean volunteering at an animal shelter, a hospital, or a home for seniors; growing a garden to nurture plants; or helping a new mom with her baby.
Whatever form of nurturing you do, and whomever or whatever you nurture, the more you serve with love, the greater compassion you’ll feel for all parts of your own life.
Optional: Diving Deeper
Looking to dive more deeply into your bliss, your authentic self, or sharing a difficult story? Consider these Daring to Rest optional prompts:
•Now that you have been practicing yoga nidra meditation for a while, what does bliss mean to you? Draw, freewrite, or create a movement piece to the meaning of bliss.
•Who are you on the inside? How has yoga nidra helped you discover your authentic self? Freewrite on this topic.
•Share a difficult story you have been holding in your heart. Where do you feel this story in your body? How has practicing yoga nidra helped you to let go of the hold the memory had on your mind and to see that everything will be all right? Freewrite on these questions or speak your answers into a recording device.
•If you have given birth or attended a birth, freewrite on the moment the baby was born. Give lots of details about how this event made you feel. After telling this story, how do you feel in your body? Freewrite again.
•Freewrite in your journal about your soul whispers.
Key Points in Chapter Nine
•Your bliss body is the fifth of five bodies of awareness that reside in you. It is the place that knows everything is going to be okay.
•It’s here in the bliss body that you see your true self. When the bliss body is balanced, there are no more illusions surrounding you, and the final layer of emotional exhaustion dissolves.
•During yoga nidra meditation, you’re being guided to the deepest state of consciousness, a fourth dimension known as turiya. Here you experience profound stillness, you are essentially thoughtless, and your unconscious mind is completely open to affirmations and intentions.
•It is in the bliss body that you find your internal power switch because the bliss body reveals the soul.
•In hard times, connecting to your bliss body via yoga nidra reminds you that everything is going to be okay.
Phase Three
RISE
When sleeping women wake, mountains move.
CHINESE PROVERB
After you’ve given attention to your five bodies, your vibrant, whole self becomes visible to you and often to others. This third phase of the Daring to Rest program is about rising up to lead from your most authentic self, and to dream big, which releases the final layer of exhaustion: life-purpose exhaustion.
Life-purpose exhaustion could mean that you’re not in the right job or not pursuing your dreams. But it doesn’t always mean you’re not enjoying your life. Many women come into my rest programs feeling that they are in a job and life they love, but they just don’t know how to manage their life without chronically burning out. In this final phase, you will take your yoga nidra “out of the bed” and learn how to use it to live a well-rested lifestyle. To do that, you’ll first need to lead differently and dream big from this well-rested place.
Why is leading differently and rising up so important for women? To answer that question, it’s important to understand women’s complicated history with rest and how that history has held us back from our power. The truth is that our culture has tried to subdue women’s wildish nature for centuries. From the mid-nineteenth century until the late 1910s, upper-middle-class women were routinely prescribed “rest cures” to help them recover from “nerves,” “sick headaches,” and other inexplicable ailments. Creative women received the strictest of rest cures, often being told not to get out of bed for fear they might write or do something irrational. “Innate feminine weakness” became a label attached to women, and even today we still see it applied to us.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, a feminist writer in the late nineteenth century, was told by her doctor in 1887 to “live as domestic a life as far as possible” and “never to touch pen, brush or pencil again as long as I live,” in addition to getting extensive bed rest.1 In 1892 Gilman wrote the semiautobiographical short story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” a fictional account through which she (indirectly) bashes the doctor who put her on the rest cure. Why? Because she knew that the rest cure was causing her creative spark to go out, and she suspected that might even be its underlying intention.
Women like Gilman didn’t receive this prescription without a reason. Huge numbers of middle- and upper-middle-class women began showing signs of invalidism in the late 1800s, soon after the industrial revolution when women’s roles became essentially restricted to organizing the household, having sex with their husbands, and raising children. Not surprisingly, they began to fall apart mentally. But how was the rest cure a solution? How could a woman like Gilman, who considered herself a writer, lie in bed, do nothing, and never write again? Gilman saw this as an assault on her entire being. Today, I’d call this an attempt to extinguish her Wild Woman.
In Gilman’s time, rejecting rest was a good bargain. It helped women move forward, feed their wildish nature, and get out of bed and into the world. Today, there is a growing movement of women who are beginning to choose an even better bargain: we are embracing rest, and we’re doing it on our own terms, journeying through programs like this, embracing a slower-paced life, tuning in to rhythm, and leading differently as a result. In the past, rest cures were prescribed to repress women’s desires and inspiration and to keep them in a place of domestic subservience. Today, when we dare to rest, we are doing so to get back in touch with our desires and our inspiration because this feeds our Wild Woman. We are prescribing ourselves a new rest cure—one that says we are no longer subservient to modern society’s dictum to “do more, be less.”
Today’s times need more brave women modeling rest; reclaiming a legitimate, healthy need for real relaxation; and leading from this well-rested place. Yes, there are real barriers in the workplace that don’t support the realities of today’s world, where women are caretakers in some capacity (for children, parents, pets) for most of their lives. Women like Arianna Huffington, with her “sleep revolution,” are leading the cause to help address workplace barriers and shatter women’s bad bargain with rest, showing us that we can dream big and rest—that it’s not an either-or situation. There’s still work to do, but like a pendulum, the groundswell of so many worn-out women in the world is beginning to turn the tide.
Our bad bargain with rest is a thread that runs deep. While it may feel convenient to blame cultural demands on women for our lack of rest, which certainly do exist, the root of overdoing is often tied to worthiness issues—not feeling worthy of love and success. The rising-up energy we’ll explore in the final phase of our Daring to Rest journey is about how to live a lifestyle aligned with the five-bodies model you’ve just moved through, making sure you water all five bodies and demand a soul-driv
en life that asks, “What about me?” Your well-rested woman has been talking to you these past thirty days through your soul whispers; now it’s time to act on what she’s been saying and rise up.
Hopefully, by now, practicing yoga nidra has taught you that when you drop into the deepest state of consciousness, absolute stillness, you remember who you truly are. The challenge is to trust in who you are even when you’re not practicing yoga nidra so that you don’t lead from a place of who you are not. That was initially Gilman’s problem—she was unable to be her authentic self in the real world where women’s value seemed to not matter. Her turning point? Rejecting rest and becoming a writer, exactly what she was told not to do, but her authentic self said otherwise. It takes courage to stand in your authentic self, but now you’re ready. Yoga nidra has prepared you for this moment to rise.
I always tell women that yoga nidra is an opportunity to lie down and wake up. You have already been “waking up” for thirty days to your authentic self and some big realizations about how your life has to change, but now you will begin to envision how to make these changes happen because living life asleep is exhausting. Gilman and other women in previous centuries fought to stay connected to the Wild Woman within them so that they could keep their internal power switches fully turned on, so that they could stay in their creative hot spots, and so that they could hear the intuitive voices that guide us to be who we are, not who we were told to be.
Gilman also fought to stay awake to her purpose in life because she saw this contributing to a world where more women were liberated from the chains of cultural expectations. When you are your truest self, you become the change you seek in the world—through your work, home life, and relationships—and this change ripples into the world. It doesn’t matter if you stay at home with your children or you run a business—the formula is the same. This final phase is about asking, “Are my choices in harmony with me?” Because when you do what enlivens your soul, the final layer of exhaustion lifts.
My Kenyan friend Faith illustrated this point to me so beautifully when, years after the robbery, we were texting about a dream I have of setting up an academy that would teach women and girl leaders the Daring to Rest program. I told her I was concerned that so many young women in high school, college, and beyond are experiencing anxiety, depression, and sleep issues. Many of them are losing their confidence, zest for life, and desire to contribute to the world as leaders. I told Faith, “I want to make a difference.” Here’s her simple response: “Imagination is free. I am already praying for the academy.”
As you move through these final ten days of the Daring to Rest program, I encourage you to remember Faith’s words: “Imagination is free.” This perhaps sums up the magic that yoga nidra infuses you with—permission to rest, permission to dream big again, and permission to lead from a well-rested place that expresses exactly who you are. It’s now time to enter our final phase together, so hold on to your yoga nidra pompoms, dear Sister, and here we go.
10
LEAD
A New Model of Embracing All of You
Days 31–35
The beauty of yoga nidra is that after cleaning up your five bodies while consciously sleeping, you are pointed back to your true nature, and this juicy spot, where you are unapologetically you, is the ideal place to lead from. This is the well-rested woman—calm, wild, and free to be herself.
For centuries, our wildness has been locked up and vilified. In the 1900s, a woman who was viewed as falling apart mentally might receive an ovariectomy, removal of the ovaries, as an estimated 150,000 women did because it was believed that the ovaries controlled a woman’s personality. Sounds insane now, but this is one way society has tried to control our Wild Woman. This control has led us to doubt our true selves and send our true natures into hiding. Well, no more. When you’re practicing yoga nidra, you can’t hide because each time you lie down, you feel who you are in every cell in your body. Yoga nidra helps us know ourselves deeply, feel confident, and of course, get the deep rest we need to shine.
When you have embraced who you truly are, you are able to model a new, feminine style of leadership. This is whole-person leadership. Most women accomplish more when they lead from their whole, truest selves, and they’re happier too. Modeling feminine leadership is the key to staying well rested, and changing the world.
A few years ago I attended a workshop by Tara Brach, an inspiring meditation teacher, therapist, and well-known author. She explained that the purpose of meditation was not to find your goals in life, but rather your “gold.” That’s what we’ve been doing with yoga nidra: daring to rest for gold, not goals. Now it’s time to take what you’ve learned through your yoga nidra meditation—your gold—and use it to bring purpose and power to how you lead your life and to realize your big dreams.
Basic Instructions for Days 31 to 35
1.Practice the Phase Three: Rise Meditation daily. Continue to use your most recent intention and your touchstone. You might like to place your touchstone on your throat to activate the fifth power center or on the space between your eyebrows to activate the sixth power center.
2.At the end of yoga nidra, listen for and track your soul whispers.
3.Optional: Continue to practice connecting with your Council of Women outside of your yoga nidra meditation.
4.Optional: Discover your big dreams and start using a big dream as your intention during yoga nidra meditation if it feels right.
5.Optional: Use additional practices to help you lead from a place of embracing all of yourself.
6.Optional: Use the Diving Deeper prompts to explore obstacles to well-rested leadership and use storytelling to envision and embrace your well-rested woman.
Feminine Leadership Keeps Us Well Rested
As you’ve seen over the last thirty days, cleaning each body of awareness lead us to our soul, the seat of wholeness:
The physical body: Deep rest, safety, groundedness
The energy body: Life force, vitality, rhythm
The mental body: Transforming the mind, greeting emotions
The wisdom body: Intuition, the Wild Woman, self-trust, consciousness
The bliss body: Spiritual connectedness, freedom from suffering, life-purpose connection
If you’re feeling worn out, at least one of these bodies is not balanced. The good news is that in addition to yoga nidra, you now have many other practices—a whole Daring to Rest toolbox—to help you keep all five bodies clear and balanced, all of which support a well-rested lifestyle. “Well-rested” doesn’t mean that you’re never tired; instead, it means you have the tools you need to nourish your wholeness and stay connected to your Wild Woman. This, in turn, will help you in difficult situations or when you need to make tough decisions, and will make it easier to recover from difficulty and focus again on the things that matter to you.
Pacing yourself, focusing on rhythm—and on the things that matter deeply to you—is feminine leadership. I’ve seen again and again how embracing it can radically change women’s levels of exhaustion. It helps them step out of leading with more masculine traits like doing, planning, achieving, and organizing. Feminine leadership leads with what I call the “slow down, feel, then act” model of leadership: it promotes slowing down, receiving, and then acting from a place of fullness. A well-rested woman leads from a feminine leadership model like the five-bodies model, because it supports her wholeness, and this wholeness supports her ability to lead.
The Truth about Feminine Leadership
Feminine leadership has nothing to do with gender; instead, it is a style of leading rooted in empathy, communication, and consciousness. It’s about bringing your whole self to everything you lead, whether it’s at work or at home. Right now, the world is starved for feminine leadership. This kind of leadership, which both women and men can embrace, is about leading with awareness.
Many people perceive feminine leadership to be weak leadership. I would argue that it’s not weak at all: this
is leadership with lots of awareness, intuition, and strong boundaries. Is it different from the paradigm many of us are living in now? Yes. It is rooted in the knowledge that everything is going to be okay. And when it’s not okay, that doesn’t mean you have to go into fear or attack mode. You can acknowledge a difficult moment and recognize that it will pass. Yoga nidra meditation teaches us, in every body of awareness, that meeting a sensation deactivates its charge and its effect on you.
Feminine leadership is leading from the heart and feelings. As ALisa Starkweather, founder of the Red Tent Temple Movement for women, posted on her Facebook page, feeling an emotion like sadness “is not to be confused with despair, or giving up, or weakness or defeat but rather a testament of engagement with deep caring, kindness, love and the willingness to keep my eyes wide open.”1 Feminine leadership, just like yoga nidra, is an awakened state. It allows you to be authentic and not fall into the female psychic slumber mentioned in chapter one. As ALisa said, feeling all of her emotions helps her take a stand and show up to lead. Women have denied this side of ourselves for too long, and we’ve especially shied away from expressing it through our leadership. In order to be “good girls,” we’ve accepted a way of leading that’s not in alignment with balance and wholeness. Hopefully, yoga nidra has taught you that if you start with feeling, then the warrior, a more masculine energy, will also rise, but it will rise out of a deeply sacred feminine space. We need more leaders who lead from a peaceful, heart-based model because that’s the energy that spreads peace.
Being and Becoming
Once you find yoga nidra, it’s tempting to use it only for deep rest—nourishment of the body. The problem is that eventually your soul says that you also need to live your purpose. Rebooting your energy requires a fully charged body and soul. The Vedic teachings, a source of yoga science and philosophy, inform us that our soul needs both being and becoming. We tend to think of the soul as this calm state of being that wants nothing. There is actually another aspect of the soul that calls you to live your purpose.