STEP ONE—THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH: SETTING YOUR INTENTION
The only way out is to simply observe.
—JEAN KLEIN
Before beginning Yoga Nidra, we often begin with two preliminary steps. In step one, you assert your intention to give the practice your wholehearted attention. This intention sets the stage for your mind to remain focused and undistracted throughout each session of Yoga Nidra. From this perspective, Yoga Nidra is a form of mindfulness training wherein the mind regains its ability to be one-pointed and undistracted.
The mind is usually many-pointed, constantly distracted and moving in many directions from object to object, never resting for more than a few milliseconds. It is often preoccupied, and identified with innumerable opposites, constantly seeking pleasure and satisfaction while trying to avoid pain and dissatisfaction. Our preoccupation with one pole of various pairs of opposites reinforces our perception of duality and incites conflict, separation, and suffering. From the perspective of Yoga Nidra, identification by the mind with the ever-changing pairs of opposites is the underlying cause of suffering.
As you recognize and abide as Being, your mind learns not to fight with changing experiences and allows them to be as they are. Misperception based on dualistic thinking dissolves, and equanimity is irrevocably recognized even in the midst of everyday living. While pragmatically one-pointedness is a prerequisite, ultimately the mind does not have to be one-pointed in order for equanimity to be recognized, because in reality the equanimity of Being is always present no matter your state of mind or body.
Sleep of the Yogi
During Yoga Nidra, we intentionally enter into a state that approximates sleep, during which dreamlike movements spontaneously appear. But unlike sleep, during which the mind unconsciously identifies with these movements, during Yoga Nidra we bear witness to these mental dreamlike fragments. We remain aware rather than falling into unconscious identification with them. We learn to live consciously as witnessing Presence that is always awake and full of equanimity even when the body-mind enters into sleep. This is the paradoxical process of being awake while asleep, wherein we recognize our unqualified Presence that exists independent of the body and the mind.
Usually when we fall asleep, our mind identifies itself with the dream-doer. When the body is awake, the mind identifies itself with the awake-doer. When the mind identifies itself as a doer, whether we are awake or sleeping, background Being remains veiled. In Yoga Nidra, the mind’s identification with being a doer dissolves and Being moves to the foreground. Ultimately, Being is recognized to be present whether objects are present (as in waking and dream states) or absent (as in dreamless sleep or when the mind stops thinking during waking life).
STEP TWO—DISCOVERING FOOTPRINTS: YOUR HEARTFELT PRAYER
Truth is always here. It is already the case.
—RICHARD MILLER
After acknowledging your desire to remain one-pointed, which is founded upon our love for what is, you move on to Step Two of Yoga Nidra. Here, you locate heartfelt prayers that you hold about loved ones or yourself. These may be prayers of gratitude, love, enlightenment, health, or healing. You welcome these prayers into the foreground of your conscious mind. You don’t hold your prayers as future possibilities. Instead, you affirm them in the present tense as existing realities.
Yoga Nidra reveals that we always live in the present moment; for in reality, there is only the timeless now. We may be thinking about the future or the past, but we are always doing so in the present moment. There is only this present moment, the eternal now. When you were in a past moment, your actual experience then was that it was “now.” And when you arrive in some future moment, your experience will also be that it is “now.” Ask yourself in any moment, “What time is it?” and your firsthand experience will always be, “It’s now.” In reality there is only now, which is our actual experience before the thinking mind divides the seamless now into conceptual past and present.
When we position our prayers in the future, we strive for something that will never arrive. So we always phrase prayers in the present tense. Instead of saying “I will be healthy,” “I will feel loved,” or “My friend will be cured of disease,” we affirm, “I am whole, healed, and healthy,” “My True Nature is love, which I am in this moment,” or “My friend is whole, healed, and healthy.” When the future arrives, it will be now. So we acknowledge this fact by making the future reality of our prayers the actuality of this moment, and set our prayers in the language and reality that they are true, now. Each prayer must evoke an attitude of gratitude for the truth that it is conveying. So affirm their truth with your entire mind, heart, and body.
I once visited a friend who was undergoing chemotherapy and feeling depressed and hopeless. His prayer for healing was set firmly in the future, so I invited him to rephrase it into the present tense and to feel its truth as he affirmed it. He was shocked at the difference when he stated, “I am whole, healed, and healthy.” He realized that in spite of the cancer and his body feeling sick and exhausted, something inside him did feel “whole and healthy” and in no need of healing. As we sat together he had a spontaneous glimpse of True Nature and realized he had never been sick a day in his life. He realized that indeed, “I am whole and healthy in spite of what is happening in my body-mind.” It was a remarkable revelation for him, and had a lasting impact on his psychospiritual well-being.
Once your prayers are acknowledged, you set them aside so that you can revisit them at the end of the practice when you are in the disposition of complete openness and can experience your prayers as present-moment realities. Living your prayers in this manner opens them to their full potential.
STAGE ONE—PERCEIVING TRUTH: SENSING YOUR BODY
When you come to innocent, unconditioned listening, your body goes spontaneously into deep peace.
—JEAN KLEIN
Now that intention and prayer are in place, you begin systematically rotating attention through the Physical Body (annamaya kosha) to counteract the physical disturbances that appear when you lose touch with your inherent omnipresent spaciousness. Innocent, unconditioned listening to physical sensation reestablishes your body’s innate radiance.12 Through the simple act of body sensing, you will grow to appreciate your body as a rich source of effervescent feedback that is always pointing back to its innate ground of physical, psychological, and spiritual vitality.
Radiant Omnipresence
You may believe that the skin defines the boundary of your body. But the body is actually a multidimensional vibration that extends infinitely beyond any conceptual limitation of center or periphery. True Nature has neither center nor periphery. It is simultaneously everywhere because it is omnipresent by nature. Unfortunately, we have forgotten this as our lived experience. We have grown numb to the infinite variety of physical sensations that form the radiance that is our body. This is why disease processes can go undetected for months or years before they erupt to the surface of awareness as discomfort or pain. We are usually unaware of the subtle messages that our body is sending as it tries to inform the mind that something is amiss.
Kaleidoscope of Information
When we are unable to perceive subtle body-sensations, we must wait for grosser impressions to emerge into awareness. Unfortunately, by the time we recognize these sensations it may be difficult to heal what is ailing the physical or mental body. Yoga Nidra attunes us to the subtle energetic resonances that make up the physical body. As we discern the myriad array of sensation that our body is constantly emitting, we become creative caretakers of this beautiful temple of vibration that is our body.
As you relearn to feel your body as subtle radiant vibration, you gain access to a vast kingdom of feedback that enables you to experience the entire range of messages that your body is constantly providing regarding its current state of physical, psychological, and spiritual health. We’ve forgotten how to meet, greet, and listen to the messages that the body is constantly sending.
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When we don’t “hear” its subtle feedback, the body may turn up its volume by providing gross physical and mental symptoms. The good news is that the practice of Yoga Nidra reawakens your innate capacity for hearing even the subtlest cues that the body is sending. Then you will be able to affirm the yogic proverb, “What to the ordinary person feels like a microscopic speck of dust in the eye, to the yogi feels like a large splinter of wood.” When you can acknowledge and welcome the body’s cues, you will be able to respond with appropriate action long before your body becomes sick. This is only one of many miracles that Yoga Nidra reveals.
The Homunculus
When we rotate awareness through the physical body, we begin and end in a particular order. We begin in the mouth and end in the feet by tracing precise pathways in the body that have been mapped out by Yoga practitioners for thousands of years. Modern neurophysiologists have also explored these pathways using electrodes to probe the precise interconnections between the physical body and the brain. They have mapped out a vast array of nerve fibers that move to and from the cerebral cortex of the brain, which correlate with precise areas in the physical body.
We give special importance to these sensory-enriched areas as we rotate attention through the physical body during the practice of Yoga Nidra. We begin in the mouth, ears, and eyes, move down the neck into the arms, hands, and fingers, then down the torso into the pelvis and into the feet and toes. As we move through the physical body in this manner, we are simultaneously traveling through the homunculus by way of the sensory and motor cortex areas of the brain. By heightening awareness of our physical body, we are able to simultaneously effect a deep relaxation in brain activity, which heightens our ability to be both alert and relaxed at the same time. Yoga Nidra relaxes the mind by relaxing the body, and relaxes the body by relaxing the mind.13
The Chakras
While Western science provides a map that pinpoints the most sensitive areas of the body according to the sensory and motor cortex, Yoga provides another map that identifies areas of energetic significance, the chakras (Sanskrit: “energy centers of the body”). Often associated with the seven glands and nerve plexuses of the human body, the chakras are extraordinary, complex, interwoven energetic networks (Sanskrit: sukshma sharira) that are constantly providing us with exquisite information regarding our physical, mental, and spiritual health.
These Western and Eastern maps help us rotate attention through the body in a systematic manner that ensures a quick and profound relaxation in both body and mind. When we rotate consciousness through the body, practice after practice, we recover the body as radiant expansive vibration that dissolves stress, promotes vibrant health, and reawakens our inborn disposition of nondual Being. Currently, you may only experience your hand as tingling sensation encapsulated by the walls of the skin; through Yoga Nidra, you realize the hand as a vast field of multidimensional vibration extending infinitely in all directions. Body sensing awakens the body as Vastness unfathomable to the mind, unlimited by conceptual boundaries. Ultimately, Yoga Nidra discloses this as the truth concerning all objects. All objects are compressed radiant vibration. And everything, taken together, is radiant Presence, vibrating from Itself to Itself. This you realize through your practice of Yoga Nidra.
Invent Nothing, Deny Nothing
During Yoga Nidra, you learn to pay close attention to the naturally arising phenomena of your body and mind. You neither invent nor deny anything. Yoga Nidra is not a strategy of self-improvement. Listening and welcoming are your tools, and Yoga Nidra is your process for learning how to listen and welcome all that you are and all that life is—without intention for anything to be other than it is.
We have no intention to fight with or go beyond anything that arises. When sensations arise without resistance, they bubble up and dissolve in awareness just like bubbles rising to the surface of a lake. As they dissolve, we perceive the deeper levels that lie below them. What is important is that we neither get involved with nor repress our experiences. In Yoga Nidra, we proceed through a natural progression moving from gross sensation to very refined levels of energy. For instance, we move from perceiving gross body-sensation during stage one of Yoga Nidra, to being aware of subtler movements of energy during stage two while working with the Energy Body.
STAGE TWO—CATCHING TRUTH: AWARENESS OF BREATH AND ENERGY
One who understands the breath quickly tastes the ecstasy of liberation.
—GORAKSASHASTRA
Rotating attention through the Physical Body awakens understanding of the body as infinite radiant vibration. As we experience this vibratory field, what at first is perceived as gross sensation gives way to subtler levels of energy. We begin to naturally experience the subtle Energy Body (pranamaya kosha) that animates and gives life to the Physical Body. Our breath is intimately linked to the Energy Body, and it is here that we become mindful of our breathing, which allows us to transition gracefully into stage two of Yoga Nidra, the exploration of the sheath of energy that animates the physical body.14
We initially contact and explore the Energy Body by being attentive to our breathing. We join with and follow the breath without interfering. We observe and experience the body “being breathed” through its natural cycles of inhalation and retention and exhalation and suspension. We don’t change or alter the breath in any way. We simply note and experience the breath as a spontaneous activity. By attending to the breath, you become conscious of the subtle energies that animate the breath and give life to the physical body.
Breath Counting
As well as following its spontaneous movement, we also spend time counting each breath. Counting is a form of mindfulness or one-pointedness training. We want to develop the mind’s ability to remain with a task for as long as is necessary to accomplish it. If we are to succeed in our endeavor, be it bringing an end to insomnia or anxiety, healing the body of a particular disease, accomplishing a work-related task, or awakening to True Nature, the mind needs to possess the ability to remain oriented. Breath counting develops the mind’s ability to remain undistracted for as long as an undertaking requires attention.
When counting breaths, you will be distracted by random thoughts. When this occurs, you begin counting anew. You begin again, and again you will lose your focus. Being distracted and refocusing occurs over and over again. This practice of counting is sharpening your mind’s ability to remain undistracted for long periods of time. With practice, you will find yourself alert and undistracted even as numerous potentially distracting thoughts arise. Undistracted attention is now available for you to recognize subtler movements of energy in the body.
Sensing and Breathing
You may experience the movement of your breath first as flows of sensation. But with practice, you will be aware of the naturally occurring subtle flows of energy in your body. It is one thing to conceptually understand that the body is energy. Yoga Nidra is a practice that allows you to experientially realize this fact.
For instance, as you listen to the accompanying audio, I will invite you to perform exhalation and inhalation focusing on sensation and energy flows in the left nostril and on the left side of your body. I will then ask you to perform exhalation and inhalation focusing on sensation and energy flows in the right nostril and on the right side of your body. In this way, you integrate the practice of mindfulness through observing the movement of your breath while sensing the energy flows that animate your breath and physical body. At first this may feel impossible, reminiscent of being asked to chew gum, rub your stomach, and pat your head at the same time. In time you will discover, as I have, the wondrous physical, mental, and spiritual clarity that comes as a result of doing this simple practice of breath and energy awareness.
STAGE THREE—TAMING TRUTH: AWARENESS OF FEELING AND EMOTION
Out beyond ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing is a field. I’ll meet you there.
—RUMI
As you experience the currents of energy that animate t
he body, deeper components of feeling and emotion naturally surface into awareness. This is a signal that you have entered the domain governed by the Body of Feeling and Emotion (manomaya kosha). Here we welcome and invite into awareness naturally arising pairs of opposites of feeling and emotion such as hot and cold, light and heavy, comfort and discomfort, happiness and sadness, anger and calmness, and powerful and helpless. (Tables 1 and 2, following the Yoga Nidra Worksheet).
Spacious Awareness
Try the following exercise before reading on.
• Be aware for a few moments of sensation in your right hand.
• Then feel sensation in your left hand.
• Now feel sensation in both hands simultaneously.
• Now shift your attention from sensation in your hands to the spacious awareness in which these sensations are arising.
What happens to your thinking mind when you are aware of both hands simultaneously? Observe how thinking stops, your sense of being a doer, or “me,” drops away and awareness expands to encompass the various sensations. When the thinking mind stops, awareness moves foreground, and can more easily be recognized. When you are oriented, sensation is an exquisite pointer to the awareness in which it is arising. While living in this third sheath, we work with opposites of feeling and emotion in the same manner as we worked with sensation in the Physical Sheath and breath in the Energy Body.
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