by Karen Brody
In some ways, being and becoming seem contradictory because if you need nothing and reside in a state of just being, then desires or your unique destiny shouldn’t matter. But the soul reveals that both coexist: you are both stillness and striving. People who burn out forget this and embrace only the striving. I believe this is why meditation is so popular—our culture is craving a state of being to balance all the striving.
The problem we face is how to determine what our soul desires, so we don’t just grab every desire out there. If we followed all the strivings of the mind, we’d sit and eat chocolate cake, date the best-looking person who walks in the door, or starve ourselves to look fabulous for that good-looking person. Listening to your soul whispers for the past thirty days has prepared you to not grab at those ego-driven desires. All leaders listen to soul whispers in some way, if not through yoga nidra, then by building regular quiet time into their lives in some other way. This helps them discover their gold and lead from it.
Mining Your Gold for Big Dreams
I love the word gold for the lessons we learn through yoga nidra because I immediately think of the hero’s journey, a pattern of storytelling followed by many fairy tales, books, and films and explored by Joseph Campbell in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Dorothy’s journey in The Wizard of Oz is an example of a hero’s journey. According to Campbell, a hero goes on a journey that includes the following steps:
1.She’s living her ordinary life.
2.She gets called to an adventure that will change her life.
3.She meets a mentor to help her get through the adventure.
4.She experiences many trials during the adventure, and together these act as an initiation to change her life.
5.She survives the adventure and finds the gold.
6.She returns home with the gold.
The hero’s journey of a woman following the Daring to Rest program is very similar:
1.She begins the journey asleep (living a busy, stressed-out life).
2.She gets called to wake up (by experiencing burnout, illness, or some crisis).
3.She resists the call (keeps staying too busy).
4.She finally succumbs to the adventure of waking up physically, mentally, and emotionally (via the physical body, energy body, and mental body). This may present challenges and dark moments, but it also prompts her to change her life.
5.She then experiences an awakening (via the wisdom body and bliss body, often through telling or remembering an untold story).
6.She finds victory—the gold (her internal power switch, her true self).
7.She returns to her life to share the gold (to dream big).
This is the journey you have been on. Now you’re in the final stretch, ready to reflect on the gold you’ve found, bring it into your everyday life, and share it. It’s time to look at the soul whispers you’ve gathered over the past thirty days and see what big dreams lie in their messages.
One woman came into my rest program having lost a child nearly ten years earlier. When she reviewed her soul whispers after thirty days, she felt her child’s voice kept coming through. One soul whisper was, “I’m okay, Mommy.” Another was, “Go for it.” By day 30, it was clear to her that her gold, the lesson she learned, was that “I am strong”—something she hadn’t felt since her son’s death. She knew immediately what this lesson meant: it was time to turn a devastating situation into something better. Her big dream? She started a local food and toy bank for families because her son had always loved helping homeless families during the holidays. Sometimes after resting for forty days, our big dreams are crystal clear to us, as they were for this woman; other times they’re less so. But all big dreams are powerful and often lead to taking inspired action, a combination of head- and heart-based action.
Valerie Estelle Frankel, a professor, storyteller, and author, tells us that women experience the hero’s journey with a feminine twist: “While the hero journeys for external fame, fortune, and power, the heroine tries to regain her lost creative spirit. . . . Once she hears the cries of this lost part of herself needing rescue, her journey truly begins.”2 This lost creative spirit that you found during your Daring to Rest journey is your gold, the lesson you learned. For the woman in my rest program who lost her child, her gold was rediscovering “I am strong.” Other women in my rest programs have found that their gold is to know “I am enough,” “I am worthy,” “I am sexual,” “I am woman,” “I am beautiful,” “I am safe,” or “I am sacred.” These are the parts of their creative spirit that they rediscovered from their Daring to Rest journey and took back into everyday life.
What part of your lost creative spirit are you taking back? At the beginning of the Daring to Rest program, the answer would most likely have come from your head. Your gold always comes from your heart and soul, and your big dreams do too.
If “I am enough” is your gold, this might mean one of your big dreams is ending a lifelong eating disorder. If “I am safe” is your gold, this could mean fulfilling a dream of volunteering at a rape crisis center or even starting your own organization to support women survivors of rape and sexual assault. Your gold often resembles an intention statement. For Margreet, her “I am safe” intention was also her gold, as it gave her the permission to open her own business despite years of not trusting herself because of a difficult childhood. How did she know it was her gold? Because it came up in her soul whispers, and she felt it as a guiding light as she practiced yoga nidra meditation for many continuous days.
Four Steps for Discovering Your Big Dreams
Here is a four-step process for discovering your big dreams within your gold. As you go through this process on days 31 to 35, try to do it without focusing on an outcome; focus more on how you can feel whole and birth who you are, your true nature, into everything you do. After choosing one big dream, you may choose to use this to create a new intention statement to use as you continue your yoga nidra meditations.
Step One: Create a Soul Whispers Board or Book
On days 31 to 33, use the words and images of your soul whispers from days 1 through 30 to create a soul whispers board. Use a sheet of poster board and glue the words and images from your soul whispers on it. Another option is to create a soul whispers book. Use separate pieces of paper to express each soul whisper on its own page. Punch holes in the pages to tie them together. (You can untie the pages and add additional soul whispers for these last ten days of your journey.)
Practice the Phase Three: Rise Meditation before you work on your soul whispers board or book each day.
Step Two: Create Your Gold Statement
On day 34, practice the Phase Three: Rise Meditation with your soul whispers board or book placed near the top of your head.
After the yoga nidra meditation, put your left hand over your heart, look at all the words and images on your soul whispers board or book, and notice how you feel in your body. Then ask for a song that sums up these soul whispers. You may hear the title of the song, or you may hear lyrics from the song. This song should feel like your theme song at this moment, a positive song that represents the true you. This song title or lyric is your gold statement, summing up the lessons you’ve received during your first thirty days.
On a new sheet of paper or another poster board, draw a tree and write your gold statement (the song’s name or lyrics) on the trunk of the tree. If you hear nothing when you ask for a song, write “I feel” on the tree trunk.
Step Three: Create Your Big Dream Statement(s)
Take a deep breath and read your gold statement. Put your hand over your heart, take a slow, deep breath in through your heart, and say to yourself: “Knowing my gold is (state your gold statement), my big dream is . . .” Then pause. What do you hear? Write what you receive—no more than one sentence—on a branch growing out of your tree. You can ask for up to three big dreams, if you wish, or stick with one.
Write each big dream you receive on a branch of your tree. Each branch is a b
ig dream for the coming year. Make sure each big dream aligns with your gold statement. Each big dream statement must be positive, concise, and from your heart, not your head.
Step Four: Choose One Big Dream
On day 35, practice the Phase Three: Rise Meditation and, immediately afterward, read your big dream(s) for this year. Then close your eyes and imagine your Council of Women appearing. Put your hand over your heart, close your eyes, and breathe in through your heart. If you have more than one big dream, ask them, “Where do I start? Which big dream should I follow?” If you have a single big dream, simply ask, “Where do I start?”
Listen to their answers. Don’t overthink this. Notice what dream you’re guided to start with or what first step you’re guided to take. Pass it through your gut and heart. Does it feel true to you? If so, begin using this big dream statement as the intention for your yoga nidra mediations through the completion of the forty days (and beyond, if that feels right).
The key to moving through all four steps is to trust your intuition—that’s your Wild Woman nature. Remember, you’re practicing a feminine model of operating: slow down, feel, and then act.
Judith had spent years working as a busy doula but feeling as though she wasn’t being heard, recognized, or successful. Cancer was her wake-up call. Two years after going through chemotherapy and radiation, Judith was ready to embrace a new way of being and thrive. After practicing yoga nidra, she very quickly discovered her gold from her soul whispers: “I am wise, wild, and willow.” From this gold statement, she got three big dreams, one for each word in her gold statement.
Wise: “I am writing a memoir that introduces an evolutionary meme to the cancer culture.”
Wild: “I nourish, invigorate, strengthen, and oxygenate all cell tissues through daily movement (dance, music, yoga, walking, biking).”
Willow: “I am breathing and tuning in, deepening a clearer communication with divine guidance, and learning to be more flexible in life and flow through winds of adversity.”
Your big dreams may not be directly related to the words in your gold statement, like Judith’s were, but they should always be aligned with your gold statement.
Discovering your big dreams requires you to remember that the path to well-rested is imperfect. Your dreams may not come true, but your gold is perennial. If your big dream does not manifest the way you expected, this does not mean that yoga nidra is not working for you. The path may not look familiar or be the one you thought you were taking, but keep your eyes open—your dreams don’t always bloom into the color you expect.
Optional: Practices to Help You Lead as a Well-Rested Woman
Leading your life as a well-rested woman may be a completely new way of operating for you, so remember to be gentle and kind to yourself. You’re learning to live and work more in a receiving mode. Following are practices to help you receive in order to lead.
Activate the Fifth and Sixth Power Centers
Days 31 through 35 are a great time to activate the fifth and sixth power centers. These power centers are important for dreaming big. The fifth power center is located in the throat area and helps you speak your truth and listen from your higher self. The sixth power center is located at the third eye, the space between the eyebrows on the forehead, and helps you see beyond the boundaries of right and wrong. You might like to put your touchstone on your throat to activate the fifth power center or on the space between your eyebrows to activate the sixth power center. Any stimulating essential oil, like peppermint, is good for activating rising-up energy. For the fifth power center, a great color to wear is blue. For the sixth power center, wear indigo.
Anointing Practice for the Rise Phase
Here’s another essential oil practice from Deborah Sullivan to do after your yoga nidra meditation any time during the Rise phase (days 31 to 40).
Choose an essential oil that feels empowering, such as vetiver or ginger, and apply it to your forehead, heart, and belly. Feel this oil as an initiation or consecration of the Wild Woman rising up in your body and your soul. Read the following words into a recording device, if desired.
As you anoint your forehead, heart, and belly, you invoke the ancestral ways that are transmitted through the elements, the primal forces of Mother Nature and the unseen realms. The three power centers associated with these parts of the body are sacred receptacles, holy vessels through which spirit can manifest in creation. Your forehead is for wisdom and intuition, your heart is for compassion and unconditional love, and your belly is for creative power and taking sacred action.
Feel the alignment of these three energies rising up in your mind, heart, and body. Sense the comingling of these attributes pulsing through your body and beyond your body as the scent surrounds you.
Now imagine a golden bubble around your body glowing with luminosity. Envision a way of walking on your soul path that reflects the energies of these three scared centers working in perfect balance and harmony.
Listen to any messages, images, or visions that may be rising up as you embody your wholeness, as you remember the untamed nature of the Wild Woman that is emerging through you and as you.
Just sit in the silence and stillness, feel a spacious field of love, peace, and beauty all around you. Be a conduit for the energies of light, love, and beauty united within and all around you, radiating out in all directions for the next seven generations and beyond as a blessing.
Practice Sensing and Saying Yes and No
One of the most exhausting stress loops for women starts with saying yes when we feel no. The problem is that the worn-out woman doesn’t know what a yes and no feels like in her body. We often tell women to say no more, but equally troublesome is that we also don’t feel and then follow our yeses.
Here’s a quick way to practice sensing what yes and no feel like to you:
1.Put one hand on your heart and one on your gut.
2.Place your attention at the space between your eyebrows (your third eye).
3.Take three breaths using the So Hum Breath from chapter eight. Inhale from the space between your eyebrows to the base of your spine while mentally saying the sound Soooooo. Then exhale from the base of your spine to the space between your eyebrows while mentally saying the sound Hummmmmm.
4.Be still as you rest your attention on your third eye for twenty to thirty seconds.
5.Call up a question you want an answer to and see if you feel a yes or no.
For women who have lots of decisions to make, like mothers, I often suggest making a list of all the things stressing them out, and then, on the same day every week, doing this practice, seeing if they get a yes or no for each item on the list. This is also a great practice to do weekly when you’re pregnant because giving birth centered in your true self, knowing your yes and no, is the best gift you can give your baby. If you have extra time, practice yoga nidra first and then do this practice.
Using this practice to help make decisions will help you stop overdoing. You begin with feeling, drop your ego, and then, from your true nature, make decisions that end the worn-out feeling. Beware of mistaking things you love to do as a yes. For example, many of the creative moms I work with love to cook, but when they use this practice to ask whether they want to stay up baking cupcakes late at night for their children’s school when they have work the next day, the answer they get might well be no.
Sometimes you may be faced with a difficult no: your inner wisdom will tell you that saying no to something will liberate time, but saying no may not feel good right away or may disappoint someone. If this happens, I encourage you to say no anyway. If you want to feel well-rested, you need to make the hard choices that support your wholeness.
Love Yourself First
The first thing your loved ones need is a healthy you. Here are two ways to help you put yourself first, then others.
Give kindness. When you’re spinning in mental loops, stressed out, it’s hard to be kind to yourself or others. But as I always say, after yoga
nidra, I feel like I drank a cup of kindness. To capitalize on and reinforce this feeling after you practice yoga nidra, sit up and repeat this lovingkindness meditation to yourself:
May I be happy.
May I be safe.
May I be free of physical pain and suffering.
May I be able to recognize and touch harmony and joy in myself.
May I nourish wholesome seeds in myself.
May I be healthy, peaceful, and strong.
Notice how you feel in your body. When you’re ready, you can move on to saying the words for others: May (name of a loved one) be happy. May (he/she) be safe.
Go on wonder dates. Schedule quiet time for yourself. My friend and colleague Jeffrey Davis, of the creative branding company Tracking Wonder, loves to say, “Wonder is not kid’s stuff. It’s radical grown-up stuff.” That’s right—taking time for wonder is an essential multivitamin for adults too. It helps clear your mind and relax the body.
What’s wonder? It’s a time to be curious, to not know something. It’s the gratitude and amazement we feel when we see a shooting star or a beautiful full moon. Try finding a quiet space to read poetry, or sit in a tree and then journal about what you see and how it makes you feel. Many spots in nature call up wonder. Wonder sparks ideas, so the more time you spend in wonder, the juicier you will feel when you return to your everyday life.
And if you think you don’t have time, think again. Jeffrey has two little girls, and as he says, he “sculpts time” for wonder by intentionally scheduling it in his calendar.
Optional: Diving Deeper
Looking to dive more deeply into embracing your well-rested woman? Consider these Daring to Rest optional prompts:
•What’s gotten in the way of you leading in any area of your life in the past? Why? What have you learned from practicing yoga nidra to help you lead differently now? Freewrite on this topic.