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YOGA NIDRA is a beautiful relaxation and meditation method that helps you deeply relax, rejuvenate, and therefore energize. It also increases your awareness and thus your ability to be truly present and calm. Taught at AHA! Yoga in the Himalayan Tradition, this approach to Yoga Nidra leads you to a wakeful awareness that allows your MIND as well as your body to deeply rest.
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Newcomers are often surprised to learn that YOGA NIDRA is considered a master technqiue. YOGA NIDRA is taught to students to increase focus, enhance calmness of mind, master sleep, soothe and even direct the autonomic nervous system, reduce physical and mental tension, and even to alleviate pain, and encourage recovery from many illnesses and discomforts of aging.
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Yoga Nidra is also known as “Yogic Sleep.” This simple sequence is also referred to as “Exercise without Movement,” as the subtle motions can be practiced by any body. It was designed by Swami Rama, and has been passed along to his students. Virginia Hill, your AHA Yoga teacher, learned it from her teacher, Rolf Sovik. It is essential that this has been handed down from teacher to student, to maintain its traditional format; this makes it a rich experience and more than mere physical exercise and rest.
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“Yoga Nidra is a state of conscious sleep…It is very beneficial. In it you will rest fully, experience good sleep, and also have a good state of consciousness. This practice is used by yogis to know or learn something that they ordinarily cannot know in the waking state…It is one of the finest & most beautiful exercises; it will help you solve problems & give you solutions to questions where the answers are consciously unknown to you.” –Swami Rama of the Himalayas
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At AHA Yoga, this master practice is taught in the traditional Himalayan method brought to the West by Swami Rama. The methods are simple, yet the results are profound. It certainly engenders a fuller relaxation and provides a deep rest, yet the full experience also creates a deeply balancing influence on every level of being. If you’d like to practice and feel Yoga Nidra’s results for yourself, join me Sunday, April 19, at 2 to 4:15 pm:
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WHY PRACTICE YOGA NIDRA?
I am constantly reminding my students Yoga Nidra is one of the four most important things I teach. Why would I make such a grandiose statement? There are ample reasons to practice Yoga Nidra, as well as firm documentation supporting the benefits of its practice.
Yoga Nidra helps your body rest and therefore heal. The science behind it is well-documented, including its long-lasting effects. Its impact upon healing is one of the most researched and clinically-studied yogic techniques. In fact, the DEPARTMENT of DEFENSE sponsored clinical trials at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center over 10 years ago. These and subsequent studies concluded YOGA NIDRA to be an effective strategy to support those suffering from trauma, and may help alleviate symptoms such as insomnia, depression, anxiety, hyper‐vigilance, chronic pain, and anger management, while also enhancing an overall sense of energy, sense of emotional regulation, as well as acceptance of external stress-triggers beyond individual control.
Yoga Nidra has proven so beneficial that the US Army Surgeon General and Defense Centers of Excellence as a complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) have endorsed it as a complementary alternative medicine (CAM) and it is now used regularly in over 50 DoD sites.
Yoga Nidra has also been studied for its efficacy with many other targeted populations: nursing students, adolescents, elderly persons suffering depression, college professors, those awaiting invasive procedures, those battling addiction, diabetics, and those suffering from menstrual disorders.
One study also demonstrated increased dopamine during Yoga Nidra for regular practitioners.
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In short, the possibilities of benefit from Yoga Nidra are widespread. Yet Yoga Nidra is so much more than a modality for physical healing. With practice, we not only rest, but learn to witness and therefore benefit from the various stages of consciousness. This is why it is indeed a master practice, and can take your personal practice and even life focus, joy, and purpose to its highest level.
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This class is mainly about relaxation, as the body-mind must be fully relaxed and nourished to experience deeper states of meditation. Through subtle techniques of pleasant stretching, tension relieving exercises, guided systematic relaxation, and breath training, YOGA NIDRA leads to a conscious sleep. In this way, not only the body but also the mind find profound rest, which then empowers the entire system to heal.
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What is the actual practice like? We will do a few standing warm-ups—think 1970s gym class! Shaking wrists, knees, arms, shoulders, marching, lengthening arms overhead. These are very simple: people with basic mobility to walk and get up and down from the floor can do this. This routine is easier than common yoga poses. Then we lie on the floor and first do two calming breath awareness practices. Next are some simple exercises such as lifting legs and arms, squeezing glutes, for example. The next step, also down lying down, is a tension-release exercise (hence the “exercise with no movement” moniker), another full-body breath exercise, and then a guided point-visualization technique. This then smoothly transitions into breathing in such a way to open up each side of the body, while resting in a supine position.
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Finally, there is a guided meditation that leads to the resting yet consciousness state of Yoga Nidra, a brief yet intense meditation.
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Want to experience the deepest rest of both body and mind, so you feel your best? Want to save your place in our next YOGA NIDRA on Sunday, April 19, 2020, at 2 pm?
Yes, please!
YOGA NIDRA is a luscious two hours of gentle movement followed by deep relaxation and a brief yet intense period of meditation.
Want to hear what other students have had to say about their experience of YOGA NIDRA with me? Then check out these testimonials from recent Yoga Nidra students:
