LOVE Yoga Nidra: Recent Episodes
Grainne McAnallen
I'm a massive fan of Yoga Nidra, a guided meditation that harnesses the body's natural capacity to fall asleep, and provides all the benefits of both sleep and meditation. Although that in fact is an huge understatement of the benefits. Re sleep, Yoga Nidra is a turbo charged power nap, with time in Yoga Nidra equivalent to 2-3x normal sleep time. Re meditation, the technique guides you to the deepest state of meditation possible (delta brainwave state), a state typically accessible only to experienced meditators or during sleep. For a full list of benefits visit www.loveyoganidra.com.
An exercise to use whenever you feel strong emotions building in your body. This technique diffuses the tension in your body, allowing you to feel calmer and to assess the situation you are in more clearly.
A Yoga Nidra meditation incorporating 1) Deepak Chopra’s concept of abundance, and the following affirmations from Day 21 of his 21 Days of Abundance meditation series: I am unlimited abundance. I am blissful happiness. I am exquisite well-being. I am unconditional love. I am complete harmony. I am Inner peace. 2) Concepts from family constellation work. In this practice, you cross a threshold and walk into a life of abundance, leaving behind anything that no longer serves you and making a commitment to be the best version of yourself you can be and living an abundant life.
This practice incorporates concepts and sentences from family constellation work. Through a family constellation lens, our greatest challenges also represent our greatest loyalties to our families of origin. Who are we honoring or remembering with this behavior or belief system that doesn’t serve us? In this practice, we hand back to our parents and grandparents beliefs we have inherited from them that do not serve us in living our best life today. We ask for their blessing to live our best possible life.
Inspired by Day 21 of The Chopra Center 21 Days of Abundance Meditation Series. This Yoga Nidra incorporates the visualization from the Day 21 meditation. At the deepest part of the Nidra, we sow seeds of all types of abundance in fertile soil, trusting that they will grow into strong and vibrant plants.
A recording from a live online class for a course I’m teaching at the College of Psychic Studies entitled Heal and Transform with I AM Yoga Nidra. This course explores the yogic concept of the koshas, the five layers of your being: the physical body, the energy body, the mental body, the wisdom body and the bliss body. Yoga Nidra works on all five layers of your being every time but we can use different levers and exercises to stimulate different layers. The focus here has been to connect with the energy body. Focus on how it feels in your body when you do the practice and afterwards versus judging it mentally. This is one of the skills we are aiming to hone on this course - connecting with how we actually feel about something versus how we think about it i.e. attuning to our inner knowing.
What is the change you would like to see in your life? What do you need to change about your behaviour or belief systems in order for that to come about.
You are invited to work with your own intention in this Yoga Nidra. Working with Intention supports laying down new neural pathways in the brain.
When working with intention, the rule of thumb is to make it 1) succinct and as simple as possible, 2) always stated in the positive and 3) you have a visceral response to the statement, meaning you feel a reaction in your body.
Intention can be a primary intention, supporting your efforts to connect with the bliss body e.g. “I am a being of light and love. I bring love with me everywhere I go and to everyone I meet.” Or it can be a secondary intention, supporting your efforts to show up in the world more fully. e.g. “I nurture myself and take care of my needs.”
When you work with intention in Yoga Nidra, using it to support your efforts to live differently on a day to day basis, you are drawing on the resources of your conscious and unconscious mind to support the behaviour change.
A Yoga Nidra dedicated to embracing abundance. The statement of intention is “I surrender to the sweetness of life” and is followed by the question, stated three times: “What’s the one way I can enjoy my life a little bit more?”
A Yoga Nidra dedicated to erasing the blocks to realizing your true nature and to receiving unlimited abundance. You are invited to use your own intention. This can be in the form of words, a visualization or a felt sense, and ideally all three. The more effort that is invested in making your intention more tangible and more heartfelt, the stronger the resonance it will have. Whether abundance relates to love, material possessions, health or a greater sense of ease, the key is to be grateful for it now. The more gratitude we express in life, the more we attract experiences to be grateful for. The statement of intention is followed by three affirmations. These are: 1) “From this moment forward, I invite unlimited abundance into my life”. 2) “I erase all beliefs, thoughts and emotions that block me from realizing my true nature and from receiving unlimited abundance.” 3) “I am fun, fearless and free.”
A Yoga Nidra dedicated to inviting abundance into your life. The intention used is “From this moment forward, I invite unlimited abundance into my life”. This practice also incorporates a journey through the Koshas, the five sheaths or bodies or levels of being in yogic philosophy: the physical body, the energy body, the mental body, the wisdom body and the bliss body.
This Yoga Nidra is designed to help you to get insight into challenges you are facing.
At the beginning of the Yoga Nidra, you will be invited to bring into your conscious awareness a relationship, situation or problem that you would like to get clarity on.
I highly recommend this meditation for you if you have a busy life and really need a break but don't have time. I see the half hour invested in this practice as a complete win-win. It's a break from the busyness on a physical, mental and emotional level and it also represents an opportunity to get insight into how you might manage that busyness more effectively.
This practice is not time out. It's an investment of your time in moving towards greater wellbeing.
How does it work?
During the Yoga Nidra, you will access different aspects of your consciousness, that you don't normally access in the waking state and gain insight into the challenge you are facing from these different perspectives. In practical terms, you are able to review the challenge from a different state of consciousness.
This is what Einstein was talking about when he said "you cannot solve a problem with the mind that created it". It takes a different mind or, more accurately, a different level of consciousness.
Check it out and see what insights come to you.
You are invited to work with your own intention in this Yoga Nidra. Working with Intention supports laying down new neural pathways in the brain. Intention is particularly powerful in Yoga Nidra as we state our intention when we are beyond the conscious mind, so there is no resistance to our stated intention. When working with intention, the rule of thumb is to make it 1) succinct and as simple as possible, 2) always stated in the positive and 3) you have a visceral response to the statement, meaning you feel a reaction in your body. Intention can be general, and cover anything from the simple “I am kind to myself” to “I am at peace with myself as I am and the world as it is.” Or it can be specific, and cover anything from “I eat healthy foods that nourish my body” to “I stay connected to my breath in every moment.” Choose an intention that supports change you are trying to implement in your life. This means that you will be drawing on the resources of your conscious and unconscious mind to support the behaviour change.
A Yoga Nidra technique that can be used at any time as a centering and relaxation exercise. Practice using the audio and then shift to doing it independently so that it can be available to you at any time. If you practice Yoga Nidra regularly, the muscle memory that you have from using the technique in the Nidra will kick in and over time you will access a deeper level of relaxation than from doing a stand alone exercise.
A Yoga Nidra technique that can be used at any time as a centering and relaxation exercise.
Practice using the audio and then shift to doing it independently so that it can be available to you at any time.
If you practice Yoga Nidra regularly, the muscle memory that you have from using the technique in the Nidra will kick in and over time you will access a deeper level of relaxation than from doing a stand alone exercise.
A Yoga Nidra to assist with managing stress levels and forming a more relaxed relationship with life. The affirmation used is: "I am at peace with myself as I am and the world as it is." So often stress arises because we refuse to accept reality. We want circumstances to be different or we want to be showing up differently. All of our energy goes into rejecting the situation as it is rather than accepting what we cannot change and focusing our efforts on what we can change. When we push things away, we give them more power over us. When we can embrace and accept everything exactly as it is, we are empowered to change it. This affirmation could also be stated as “I accept myself as I am and the world as it is.”
A Yoga Nidra designed to help you to make up for lost sleep. Yoga Nidra is a sleep-based meditation technique, which means that it harnesses the body’s falling asleep mechanism to access a deep state of meditation. In practice, you are guided from the waking state to a deep sleep state and back to the waking state. It is a consciously-experienced, complete sleep cycle. Because of this, it is the ultimate power nap as 45 minutes of Yoga Nidra is equivalent to 2-3 hours of sleep. Ideally the practice is done lying down somewhere where you won’t be disturbed, the conditions in which you would normally go to sleep.
A Yoga Nidra designed to help you to fall asleep as quickly and efficiently as possible. This particular Yoga Nidra is designed to help you to fall asleep at night and to help you get back to sleep when you wake up in the night or very early in the morning. Yoga Nidra is a sleep-based meditation technique, which means that it harnesses the body’s falling asleep mechanism to access a deep state of meditation. In a typical Yoga Nidra, the practitioner guides you from the waking state to a deep sleep state and back to the waking state, allowing you to have a conscious experience of a full sleep cycle. This particular Yoga Nidra does not guide you back to the waking state. As the intention of this meditation is to support you in falling asleep, you will be guided to the deepest point in your sleep cycle and the meditation will end there, hopefully in a deep sleep state.
A Yoga Nidra dedicated to healthy eating with the following intention: I eat healthy foods that nourish my body, and the following affirmations: 1) I see food for what it is, a source of nutrients for my body. 2) I eat when I am hungry and I eat in moderation. 3) I eat slowly and consciously and to the point where I have satisfied my hunger.
A Yoga Nidra dedicated to achieving your full potential in life. The intention for the practice is “I am released from my self-image to explore, expand and experience the infinite potential unfolding from within me.” In other words, I let go of my conditioning, what I’ve been told or I tell myself about what I can and cannot do, and open myself up to exploring my full potential.
In this Yoga Nidra you use a technique known as "tension and relaxation". I will invite you to inhale and to hold your breath as you tense various parts of your body, and then to exhale and relax when your body prompts you to do so. Only hold to your comfort level to stay in the experience. If you cannot have undue pressure in your head for medical or other reasons, please breathe normally throughout the exercise.
This is a long Yoga Nidra and the pace is slow so it is recommended for those with some prior experience of the practice or of other relaxation techniques.