I came across this Yoga Journal article about Yoga Nidra and thought it would be worth sharing. Enjoy!
Reflections of Peace
A proven antidote to anxiety and restlessness, the ancient practice
of yoga nidra has been adopted by veterans, recovering addicts, and
run-of-the-mill stressed out people.
By Katherine Griffin, yoga nidra meditation by Richard Miller.
One cool evening in a high-ceilinged dining hall in Novato,
California, an unlikely yoga class is getting under way. Fourteen men
wearing blue jeans, work boots or running shoes roll out yoga mats and
get settled on sleeping bags, blankets, and pillows.
The instructor, Kelly Boys, smiles as she surveys her students,
residents at Henry Ohlhoff North, a substance abuse recovery center. She
asks if anyone wants to discuss their experiences in the previous
week's session. A trim 52-year-old named Charles volunteers that he
struggles with feelings of loneliness.
"How does your body feel when it hits you?" Boys asks. "Tense,"
Charles says. "And where do you feel the tension?" she asks. "In my
shoulders," he says.
"Just ask it, 'What do you need? What do you want?'" Boys says.
"We're just bringing curiosity to it. When you really meet it, it does
drop away." Charles nods, satisfied for now.
As the men settle into relaxed positions, Boys begins to talk them
through a detailed tour of their own bodies on this day and at this
moment—the first step in the practice of
yoga nidra.
Gradually the room quiets, until the only sounds are the hum of the
ventilation system and Boys' voice: "Can you feel the inside of your
mouth? Now bring your attention to your left ear. Feel the inside of
your left ear. Feel your right ear. Can you feel both ears
simultaneously?" Around the room, faces relax, jaws soften, and soon
snores start to rumble as the men drop deeper into relaxation.
Profound Rest
Yoga nidra is an ancient but little-known yogic practice that's becoming increasingly popular as both a form of
meditation and a mind-body therapy. It is a systematic form of guided relaxation that typically is done for 35 to 40 minutes at a time.
Practitioners say that it often brings immediate physical benefits,
such as reduced stress and better sleep, and that it has the potential
to heal psychological wounds. As a meditation practice, it can engender a
profound sense of joy and well-being.
"In yoga nidra, we restore our body, senses, and mind to their
natural function and awaken a seventh sense that allows us to feel no
separation, that only sees wholeness, tranquility, and well-being," says
Richard Miller, a San Francisco Bay Area yoga teacher and clinical
psychologist who is at the forefront of the movement to teach yoga nidra
and to bring it to a wider audience.
While many prominent teachers offer classes, CDs, and books on yoga
nidra, Miller is responsible for bringing the practice to a remarkable
variety of nontraditional settings. He's helped introduce it on military
bases and in veterans' clinics, homeless shelters, Montessori schools,
Head Start programs, hospitals, hospices, chemical dependency centers,
and jails. What's more, thanks to Miller, it's beginning to get serious
scientific attention. Researchers are examining the practice's potential
to help soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder; addicts
struggling to get clean; people with depression, cancer, and MS; health
care workers; and married couples coping with stress and insomnia.
More than 40 years ago, in 1970, Miller attended his first yoga class
at the Integral Yoga Institute in San Francisco. "At the end of that
class, they taught a modified yoga nidra—deep Savasana," he says. "I had
the most profound experience; there was this sense of my
inter-relatedness with the entire universe. And a vow arose in me to
really investigate this practice."
Over years of studying and teaching yoga nidra, Miller has developed
his own approach, finding ways to make the practice accessible to a
broad range of people, even those with little or no education in yoga.
In 2005, he published a book,
Yoga Nidra: A Meditative Practice for Deep Relaxation and Healing,
and he's released several audio guides as well. He currently leads the
nonprofit Integrative Restoration Institute, an organization dedicated
to the research, teaching, and practice of yoga nidra and
yoga philosophy.
"Most people are trying to change themselves," Miller says. "Yoga
nidra asks them to welcome themselves. That moment of true welcoming is
where the profound transformation takes place."
Simple Steps
It's a deceptively simple practice. Because yoga nidra is most often
taught lying down—initially guided by a teacher—it's appealing to people
who might feel intimidated by yoga postures or traditional seated
meditation. A short version of yoga nidra can be introduced and
practiced in less than 10 minutes. Yet its various elements, taken
together and practiced regularly, make up a sophisticated set of
mind-body tools that can help practitioners navigate some of life's
harshest moments. Yoga nidra can also be practiced as an accessible form
of meditation for those seeking everyday well-being.
In a typical yoga nidra session, a teacher guides practitioners
through several stages. You start by developing an intention for your
life and for the practice. Then you learn to focus your awareness on
your breath, bodily sensations, emotions, and thoughts. Throughout, you
are encouraged to tap into an underlying sense of peace that is always
present and to cultivate "witness consciousness," observing and
welcoming whatever is present without getting caught up in it.
"Yoga nidra allows us to reach the most profound level of relaxation
possible," says Rod Stryker, the founder of Para-Yoga, who has been
teaching yoga nidra since the mid-1990s and who writes about it in his
book,
The Four Desires. "It opens a doorway to a place where we can see ourselves and our lives in the most positive light."
Unlike other forms of meditation, in which you focus on a mantra or
on your breath, yoga nidra asks you simply to let go. "The practice
forces us to engage the muscle of surrender," Stryker says.
Relief for the Restless
The path to bringing yoga nidra to the attention of a wider audience
led, oddly enough, through the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, a
military treatment facility based, at the time, in Washington, DC. In
2004, Christine Goertz, an academic researcher at the Samueli Institute,
a nonprofit research institute, teamed up with Robin Carnes, a yoga
teacher who had taught yoga nidra as part of a cardiac care program at
Walter Reed. Carnes had learned yoga nidra from Stryker and from
Miller's book.
She and Goertz used Miller's approach as the basis for a
pilot study investigating whether the practice could help soldiers
suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The results of that
initial small study, conducted with active-duty service members,
suggested that yoga nidra may be helpful for managing PTSD in veterans.
(Along the way, someone at Walter Reed suggested renaming the practice
to something more accessible, and Miller coined "iRest," short for
"Integrative Restoration.") As a follow-up, a randomized, controlled
trial involving 150 participants was conducted over 18 months at the
Veterans Affairs (VA) facility in Miami from 2009 to 2010. And another
study is beginning this winter at the Captain James A. Lovell Federal
Health Care Center in Chicago.
On the basis of the pilot study results, the military is now offering
Miller's iRest yoga nidra practice to wounded warriors at Walter Reed;
Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas; Camp Lejeune, a large
Marine Corps base in North Carolina; and VA facilities in Miami,
Chicago, and Washington, DC. In these ongoing classes, soldiers have
reported that some of their most troubling PTSD symptoms, including
hyperalertness, anxiety, and sleep disturbances, have diminished.
Tools like yoga nidra can be crucial resources for soldiers adjusting
to life after war, says Mona Bingham, a retired colonel who's
researching the practice at Brooke Army Medical Center. "A lot of
soldiers are coming back [from combat] with physical, psychological, and
moral wounds," she says. "It's not something we can just give them a
medication for." She's studying iRest's effect on military couples
coping with the stress that often arises after a deployment ends.
Cheryl LeClair teaches the iRest practice to marines with PTSD and
traumatic brain injuries at Camp Lejeune. "Most of the guys don't
sleep," she says. "Some have told me they take two Ambien a night, and
they still can't sleep. But many of them fall sleep in the very first
iRest session. To see them relax and let go is just amazing."
Like the marines in LeClair's classes, new practitioners often go to
sleep during their first few yoga nidra sessions. That's not surprising,
says Stryker, since these days many people are sleep deprived. Yoga
nidra literally means "yogic sleep," but that is a bit of a misnomer.
It's not a special kind of sleep, but a state between sleeping and
waking. With more experience, Stryker says, practitioners can experience
deep rest while maintaining what he calls "just a trace of awareness."
For LeClair, whose husband returned from Iraq in 2003 with a brain
injury, PTSD, and a crushed vertebra in his neck, yoga nidra has become
an essential part of getting through what are often very trying days.
(She handles the family finances and much of the responsibility for
raising a nine-year-old grandson.) She first experienced the practice at
a weekend workshop. "After I woke up, I said, 'Whatever that is, I want
more,' " she says. Now, when she gets overwhelmed, she recalls the
lessons of yoga nidra: "If you can step back and witness the thoughts
without reaction, it gives you some space. You learn to have
equanimity."
Emotional Healing
The roots of yoga nidra are thought to go back thousands of years.
When Miller adapted the teachings to make them more accessible to
Westerners, he wanted to address emotional wellness. "The Eastern yoga
principles took it for granted that you were at a certain state of
health and well-being," he says. "What I saw was that this was not true
of most students. So I added the element of the Inner Resource."
Early on in Miller's yoga nidra instruction, as you begin to relax,
you are asked to conjure up your own personal Inner Resource, a vision
of and feeling about a place where you feel safe and secure. If intense
emotions surface during yoga nidra—or, for that matter, at any time—you
can return to your Inner Resource to take a break.
Charles, one of the men at Henry Ohlhoff North, turns to the practice
often. A former executive chef, he retired after a back injury left him
in constant pain. He became addicted to alcohol and painkillers and,
after three arrests on drug charges, chose rehab instead of jail.
Yoga nidra has helped him find his way back to a part of himself
untouched by addiction and chronic pain. His Inner Resource is the
bakery his parents ran. "I go back to my childhood," he says, "doing
chores in my parents' bakery. I think about my dad and how good it felt
to have his arms around me."
Earlier this year, when Charles was granted his first overnight pass
two months into his six-month rehabilitation stay, a friend surprised
him with a birthday party that included alcohol. Charles started to
panic.
"I went out to my car, put my head back on the headrest, and went
into [the practice]," he says. "My breathing came down, and I could
focus better." After about half an hour, he chose to leave the party and
return to the rehab center.
Early research supports the idea that yoga nidra can help people like
Charles who are in recovery from addiction. In a study of 93 people at a
chemical dependency treatment center, Leslie Temme, a professor in the
social work department of Western Carolina University, found that
participants who practiced yoga nidra had fewer negative moods and a
reduced risk of relapsing into substance abuse.
With its emphasis on
self-awareness, yoga nidra seems to help recovering addicts feel more
comfortable in their own skin, cope better with difficult emotions, and
make better choices, Temme says. What's more, she adds, "The clients
loved it. They were lining up at the door to get to it."
Inner Discoveries
If you've ever tried to sit in meditation for 30 minutes, you know
that you don't need to be recovering from trauma to be uncomfortable in
your own mind. As a meditation technique, yoga nidra offers a gentle
approach, starting with body awareness, then working compassionately
with thoughts and emotions as they arise, and gradually leading the
meditator to access a greater field of awareness. In fact, in some of
the oldest written references to the term yoga nidra, it is synonymous
with
samadhi, or union, the ultimate goal of the eightfold path.
This aspect of yoga nidra is perhaps the most difficult to put into
words, but, for Miller, it's the core of the practice. Learning to
observe and welcome all of the sensations, emotions, and thoughts that
arise in deep rest can lead a person to become less identified with the
individual self—what Miller calls the "I-thought." Through this
experience, he says, it's possible to lose the sense that one is
separate from others and to tap into an unshakable sense of
interconnectedness to all of life.
And when that happens, Miller says, "There's a deep pool of
well-being. It's what I discovered in that first yoga nidra session in
1970. That's what I try to share."
Explore the 10 Steps of Yoga Nidra ~ by Richard Miller
Getting Started: Set up your practice space by placing a
bolster lengthwise on your mat and slipping a block under the top end,
so that the bolster slants gently. Lie down with your sitting bones on
the mat and with the bolster supporting you from the low back to the
head. Place a folded blanket under your head for a pillow. Notice and
welcome sounds, smells, and taste as well as color and light. Release
excess tension throughout your body and feel a sense of relaxation
spreading throughout your entire body and mind.
Listen: To be guided into yoga nidra by Richard Miller, listen to the audio at
yogajournal.com/livemag.
1. Connect to Your Heartfelt Desire. Bring to mind your
heart's deepest desire—something that you want more than anything else
in life. Perhaps it is a desire for health, well-being, or awakening.
Feel this heartfelt desire with your entire body while imagining and
experiencing it in this moment as if it were true.
2. Set an Intention. Reflect on your intention for your
practice today. It might be to relax and rest, or to inquire into a
particular sensation, emotion, or belief. Whatever your intention,
welcome and affirm it with your entire body and mind.
3. Find Your Inner Resource. Bring attention to your Inner
Resource, a safe haven within your body where you experience feelings of
security, well-being, and calm. You may imagine a place, person, or
experience that helps you feel secure and at ease and that helps you
feel within your body the sense of well-being. Re-experience your Inner
Resource at any time during your practice or in daily life when you feel
overwhelmed by an emotion, thought, or life circumstance and wish to
feel secure and at ease.
4. Scan Your Body. Gradually move your awareness through your
body. Sense your jaw, mouth, ears, nose, and eyes. Sense your forehead,
scalp, neck, and the inside of your throat. Scan your attention through
your left arm and left palm, your right arm and right palm, and then
both arms and hands simultaneously. Sense your torso, pelvis, and
sacrum. Experience sensation in your left hip, leg, and foot, and then
in your right hip, leg, and foot. Sense your entire body as a field of
radiant sensation.
5. Become Aware of Your Breath. Sense the body breathing by
itself. Observe the natural flow of air in the nostrils, throat, and rib
cage as well as the rise and fall of the abdomen with each breath. Feel
each breath as flowing energy coursing throughout your entire body.
6. Welcome Your Feelings. Without judging or trying to change
anything, welcome the sensations (such as heaviness, tension, or warmth)
and emotions (such as sadness, anger, or worry) that are present in
your body and mind. Also notice opposite sensations and emotions: If you
feel worry, call up feelings of serenity; if you feel tense, experience
ease. Sense each feeling and its opposite within your body.
7. Witness Your Thoughts. Notice and welcome the thoughts,
memories, and images that are present in your mind. Observe your
thoughts without judging them or trying to change them. As you come upon
beliefs that you hold about yourself, also bring to mind and experience
their opposites, welcoming your experience just as it is.
8. Experience Joy. Welcome sensations of joy, well-being, or
bliss emanating from your heart or belly and spreading throughout your
body and into the space around you. With every exhalation, experience
sensations of warmth, joy, and well-being radiating throughout your
body.
9. Observe Your Self. Be aware of your sense of "I-ness," or
personality. Notice this sense of identity when you say "I'm hungry,"
"I'm angry," or "I'm happy." Then, experience yourself as an observing
witness or Awareness that is cognizant of these feelings. Set aside
thinking and dissolve into Awareness, awake and conscious of the self.
10. Reflect on Your Practice. As you complete your practice,
reflect on the journey you've just taken. Affirm how the feeling of pure
Being, or pure Awareness, is always present as a deep, unchanging peace
that underlies every changing circumstance. Imagine integrating that
feeling into your everyday life, in both pleasant and difficult moments,
and always reconnecting to that sense of equanimity.
To Finish: At your own pace, transition back to your waking
life, reorienting to your surroundings. Come back slowly, and pause for a
moment to feel grateful for taking this time for yourself.
This pose is usually done with the legs extended all the way up the
wall. Having the legs lower, with the feet against the wall, encourages
grounding by creating a sensation of "standing" on the wall, as opposed
to having the feet wide open to the sky.
Place blocks underneath the two ends of a bolster and come into
Child's Pose, with your torso supported by the bolster. It should feel
as though the support is coming up to meet you rather than your torso
dropping into the support. Slide your arms underneath the gap between
the bolster and the floor, bringing each hand toward the opposite elbow.
If the forearms or elbows don't touch the ground, fill in the space
with towels or blankets so that you are supported from the elbows to the
fingers. Supporting the elbows and arms helps to release tension in the
upper back and neck and to integrate the arms back into the body. In
order to release tension in the lower back and create a deeper sensation
of groundedness, place a heavy blanket on your sacrum. If the base of
the shins or the tops of the feet are off the floor, prop them with a
rolled-up towel.
Supta Baddha Konasana opens the whole front of the body: the pelvis,
belly, heart, and throat. These are areas we instinctively protect,
which is why a pose like this can leave one feeling exposed and
vulnerable.
Twists are generally good for the nervous system, but some twists can
make breathing feel constricted, which can be anxiety provoking. This
gentle, supported twist allows more room for the breath to come into the
rib cage and belly.
Savasana can be a very expansive pose, especially when done with the
legs wide apart and the arms away from the side body. Keeping the legs
and arms a little closer to the body encourages a more contained
feeling.
This reversed variation can feel more secure for someone who feels
vulnerable in Savasana. Lie on your belly. Turn your head to the right.
Bring your arms out to the side, elbows bent. Take your right knee out
to the side. If needed, place a blanket for cushioning and support under
the right arm, knee, thigh, belly, or all four. Cover your entire body
with a blanket, including the exposed soles of your feet. After a couple
of minutes, turn your head to the other side and switch the position of
the knees. Stay here 5 to 10 minutes, releasing your whole front body
into the ground.