What Yoga Nidra Means To Me

I’d like to share with you my take of what yoga nidra is in experiential form. This won’t be technical, there’s a lot to it if you want to get into what it is and what it does or doesn’t do. None of that ever really mattered to me. For me, it’s always been about the way it makes me feel. 

I was a very reactive person. Easily triggered and always right. I couldn’t see my own stuff. I had a wall up that prevented me from seeing it because seeing it would make me feel worse than I already did inside. But, then came yoga nidra. 

I never expected it to have an impact on me. At this point, I was primarily a yogi that was only practicing postures and mental strength through challenge. Yoga, the kind most people are doing, was therapeutic in allowing me the space to finally be open to practicing, what I thought was, of lesser value. I was journaling, going to counseling, “doing the work”, so why would I need to sit there and stare at the back of my eyes while listening to whimsy and fairytale. 

Then I got smacked in the face with a saying most yogis dread to hear- the path that you resist, is the path you need most. What we resist, persists. It has a way of finding us, and thank God it does because at the end of the resistance is more often than not, our true purpose. The thing that makes your heart feel like it’s actually beating again and, for me, the thing that gave me back a life that I never knew I lost. 

After my first teacher training, I knew I wanted to teach this, and I knew it meant something more to me than anything else had. I used to try a lot of different things and give up on myself before I could get good. I was a queen of false starts. Not this one, this one I couldn’t wait to get my toes wet and share with everyone what I experienced through that training. I had no idea it would begin to heal me. Didn’t know I needed to be healed. I’m not saying that we are all walking around broken beings, I don’t believe that. I think that the wound that protects the thing we want the most, becomes our most important talisman, and a compass of sorts, for your life.

No person on this planet is perfect. That is a false assumption and not a human experience. Your crappy things that you hate yourself for or the ways you feel like you're less than - those are only there because you haven’t let yourself accept what is. They’re there. They exist. A lot of people cling to the wall of ignorance because what’s on the other side is against the law. Not allowed to look or take ownership of what’s inside. That’s a false reality. I was living in it, and reacting to protect it. 

What we react to still has a charge that has an outside-feeling power over us. We’ve all felt it. Feeling like you’ve been hijacked or not feeling like you can change. That’s coming from deep body memory that can’t be accessed easily from a waking state. Your mind is too distracted and logical. 

Yoga nidra gave me an unassuming way into the places that I didn’t love, and it let me be with them without feeling like I was the biggest f up in the world. That to me, is priceless. I have witnessed in myself, and through others, the freedom that practicing this technique can bring. It’s like resurfacing for air and finally feeling full lungs. It can’t really be explained, only felt. 

Sure, my first time practicing wasn’t life changing, but over the course of 10 years practicing, I have managed to find freedom from things that used to rule my life. You don’t really have to do anything but continually show up with an open heart and let the practice guide you. You’ll become a strong antenna for reading energy as a byproduct. The more people practice the more they increase inner senses and if you know what that’s like, then you know. If you don’t, you probably should. I also know what it’s like when I stop practicing and become, once again, ruled by my judgmental thoughts leading to low frequency things happening. I’m human, it happens. It needs to. All emotions are equal and valid in the land of energy. Our brains are what create preferences to our experiences and sensations that lead to suffering over minute things. 

To sum this long story up about what yoga means to me, it’s this - freedom. 

Freedom is the ultimate gift. It gives back tenfold what we think we want and try to control. You never know who you’ll be outside of the personality you think you have to be to survive. I am forever grateful for the ability to receive love without fighting it and give it without expecting pain. Didn’t even know I was doing that until I started practicing. I guess that’s why most of us never change, we can’t see more than where we are. If you had of asked me before I would’ve told you I was perfect (wink).